Fergie's Tech Blog

Feds Charge California Woman With Stealing IDs From the Dead

Kevin Poulsen writes on Threat Level:

Federal prosecutors this week charged a Southern California woman with aggravated identity theft and other crimes for allegedly using a popular genealogy research website to locate people who had recently died, and then taking over their credit cards.

Tracy June Kirkland, 42, allegedly used Rootsweb.com to find the names, Social Security numbers and birth dates of people who, shall we say, had no further need for their consumer credit lines. She then "would randomly call various credit card companies to determine if the deceased individual had an … account," according to the 15-count indictment filed in federal court in Los Angeles Tuesday.

Rootsweb, run by Provo, Utah-based The Generations Network, is a genealogical research site offering a wealth of resources. One of them is free, up-to-date access to the Social Security Administration's Death Index, a list of people who have died, along with their birth dates and Social Security numbers.

Ironically, the government produces the monthly Death Index so that banks and other lenders can prevent people from applying for credit using a dead person's information -- the index is made public by the Department of Commerce under the Freedom of Information Act. The caper Kirkland's accused of mastering apparently exploits a loophole, by taking over accounts that are already open.

posted by Fergie @ 4/17/2008 02:04:00 PM