Confessions of an ID Theft Kingpin, Part II

2020-08-27 16:37

Among them was Lance Ealy, a serial ID thief from Dayton, Ohio who used Ngo's service to purchase more than 350 "Fullz" - a term used to describe a package of everything one would need to steal someone's identity, including their Social Security number, mother's maiden name, birth date, address, phone number, email address, bank account information and passwords.

Ealy used Ngo's service primarily to conduct tax refund fraud with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, claiming huge refunds in the names of ID theft victims who first learned of the fraud when they went to file their taxes and found someone else had beat them to it.

The Secret Service had difficulty pinning down the exact amount of financial damage inflicted by Ngo's various ID theft services over the years, primarily because those services only kept records of what customers searched for - not which records they purchased.

Even as he bounced from one federal detention facility to the next, Ngo always seemed to encounter ID theft victims wherever he went, including prison guards, healthcare workers and counselors.

In the final months of his detention, Ngo started reading everything he could get his hands on about computer and Internet security, and even authored a lengthy guide written for the average Internet user with advice about how to avoid getting hacked or becoming the victim of identity theft.

News URL

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/08/confessions-of-an-id-theft-kingpin-part-ii/