LifeLock Blog

A formal employee of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and his brother were sentences to prison after being convicted to an identity theft scheme. The scheme used the Federal Reserve employee’s position as a information and technical analyst to steal information from the bank. He and his brother would then use the information to steal identities to apply for student loans which they used to buy boats and other recreation vehicles.

Curtis Wiltshire and Kenneth Wiltshire, where both convicted of identity theft after stealing more than 450,000 in student loans and 525,000 in loans for boats. Kenneth Wiltshire, 41, was also convicted of mail fraud and was sentenced to 57 months in prison and is to forfeit $525,160 in cash and pay $1.02 million in restitution. Curtis Wiltshire, 35, was also convicted of bank fraud and was sentenced to 40 months in prison and ordered to forfeit $200,000 in cash.

The scheme was found out after a investigator found data on a drive that was attached to Curtis Wiltshire’s computer. The drive had on it two fake student loans which featured a Fed worker’s photo which did not match the name on the application.

Once again this just proves that your private and sensitive information is never really safe in the hands of the people who are supposed to protect it. One can never prevent all kinds of identity theft, but one can be ready to nip it in the bud if it were to ever happen. There are many good identity theft services out there my favorite being LifeLock. If you are in need of identity theft services I would try them out first.

Identity Theft is becoming more and more of a problem as time rolls on. It seemed for the longest time no one was taking it seriously. In the last couple of years we have seen several states and the US government put into place laws that will help prevent identity theft. One example is the Red Flag Rules, designed to make creditors make a system for identify and correcting identity theft, which the government is still trying to get business to comply to but at least they are trying.

Some state have started to get in on the action like New York, which has passes new laws that will prevent the government, businesses and other employers from using someone’s Social Security number as a form of identification. The law will also allow consumers to place a credit freeze on their credit reports within 24hrs to prevent an identity thief from doing any more damage.

The new law not only helps keep people from having their identity stolen but also helps fix their credit after an identity theft has already taken place. As some people know the process of repairing your credit and recored after an identity theft is a long and hard one. These new laws have set out to make the process shorter and prevent the long-term consequences of identity theft.

A applaud the efforts of the State of New York and can only hope that more states make laws that are similar. More states need to take action and setup rules and regulation on how businesses handle consumers sensitive information. I would love to see businesses stop using someones SSN for identification purposes. When I was at FSU they stopped using SSN numbers for identifying students, which I thought was a smart move, and gave them student ID numbers instead. I mean really why does the cable company need my Social Security number anyway?