Fergie's Tech Blog

Feds Bust Identity Theft Ring That Targeted Forbes 400 Richest

Sharon Gaudin writes on InformationWeek:

Government authorities arrested and indicted five members of an alleged identity theft ring that was targeting billionaires from Forbes magazine's ranking of the 400 richest Americans.

Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau announced on Thursday that the defendants -- four of whom were arrested Thursday and are in custody in Michigan, Texas, Florida and Kentucky -- have been charged with stealing $1.5 million and attempting to steal another $10.7 million from their victims' financial accounts. Another defendant, Igor Klopov, was arrested in May and is in custody in New York.

Klopov, a 24-year-old Russian, was the alleged ring leader who mined the Internet to obtain victims' personal identifying information. The DA's office in Manhattan reported that he was arrested in May after he came to New York to claim $7 million in gold that he thought had been purchased with money stolen from one of his victims.

posted by Fergie @ 8/17/2007 12:21:00 PM