Fergie's Tech Blog

DoJ Losses Bid to Block Prisoner's Testimony

Roy Mark writes on internetnews.com:

Inmate #35211-086 will, after all, testify Thursday morning before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee on his criminal career as an identity thief who used online auctions to hijack peoples' identities for financial gain.

Earlier this week, the Department of Justice (DoJ) attempted to quash a summons for notorious scam artist Evangelos Dimitrios Soukas' appearance.

Soukas, 28, is expected to testify on the various online schemes he used to defraud victims of more than a million dollars. Using stolen identities obtained in fraudulent Internet auctions, Soukas filed false income tax returns in his victims' names in an attempt to obtain tax refunds. He even applied for refund anticipation loans in his victims' names.

But Monday the DoJ asked U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan to dismiss the Finance Committee's summons for Soukas since the Bureau of Prisons' policy is to not allow inmates to have an "elevated status" over other prisoners. The DoJ also cited "security concerns."

posted by Fergie @ 4/11/2007 12:19:00 PM