| Moment’s blunder puts half the country at risk
Perhaps his mind was elswhere that Thursday morning. England's hopes of qualifying for the European Championships had been dentged the night before by defeat in Moscow — still, there was the Rugby World Cup Final to look forward to at the weekend. Certainly, when the request came to send child benefit data to the National Audit Office in London, the junior official’s mind does not appear to have been on the job. He burned the entire national child benefit database on two computer discs, popped them in an envelope and sent them to the post room for collection by TNT couriers. "He messed up, it was treated as a normal piece of mail," an insider at HM Revenue & Customs said. The IT worker returned to his duties, unaware that posting that envelope would trigger the country’s biggest police investigation into possible identity theft and jeopardise the career of the Chancellor.
Russian hacker network goes underground
An online conduit accused of spreading vast amounts of malicious and criminal content has closed down its base in St Petersburg sparking fears that the operation will surface elsewhere. Security firm Trend Micro said that Russian Business Network (RBN) dropped off the internet last Tuesday, and has predicted its emergence in a newly reinvigorated form somewhere in Asia. Run by a shadowy figure known only as 'Flyman', RBN has been associated with a number of high-profile online crimes committed in the UK. Security firms have linked RBN to child pornography, corporate blackmail, spam attacks and online identity theft, according to a report in Times Online. "The UK has been a focus for this group and its criminal clients, and things are set to get worse," said David Perry, an analyst for Trend Micro.
Identity theft targets kids, and relatives often the perpetrator
While only a small percentage of identity-theft victims are children, the number is growing, and the impact on the victim's credit, confidence and relationships could be devastating. The crime can go undetected for years and is most commonly committed by a family member, according to a report released this week by the Identity Theft Resource Center, a San Diego nonprofit organization. Fortunately, simple precautions, such as keeping your child's Social Security number secret, can prevent some of the abuse. For instance, you can check your children's credit reports at credit bureaus to nip identity theft in the bud. .
Escaped convict found in Oregon after 12 years
SALEM, Ore. -- For more than a decade, Lyndal Dale Ritterbush led a comfortable life in Salem as a rental property manager. He'd done so, in part, by stealing the identity of his brother-in-law, police said. But that theft eventually caused his story to unravel. Now, he's due to be returned to Utah, where he escaped from prison in 1985 after his second sentence for sexually abusing children. Ritterbush was known in Salem as Robert "Bob" Collins Rhoden, according to a story published in the Salem Statesman Journal. The paper said it and the Salt Lake Tribune had shared information about Ritterbush's time in Oregon and his capture. The real Robert Rhoden and his wife live in Nebraska, said Sheriff Jeff Franklin of rural Clay County.
Four million Britons have fallen victim to identity fraud. Are you next?
For one so young, he seemed a peculiarly precocious convert to retail therapy. Mobile phones, iPods, swish suits and fancy holidays. You name it, he bought it. The detectives asked to investigate his strangely spendthrift ways would, though, soon find themselves facing a conundrum. Their big spender was dead. In fact, he had succumbed to a childhood brain disease when seven months old. In total, the identities of hundreds of dead babies would be plundered by businessman Anton Gelonkin in one of the largest identity theft networks uncovered in the UK. Hiding behind the stolen identities of deceased infants, Gelonkin's gang would, in the space of a decade, amass a fortune worth millions. The ease and rapidity with which his team stole so many identities perturbed officers investigating a case which provides a rare insight into the modus operandi of those perpetrating Britain's fastest-growing crime: identity theft.
Four million Britons have fallen victim to identity fraud. Are you ...
For one so young, he seemed a peculiarly precocious convert to retail therapy. Mobile phones, iPods, swish suits and fancy holidays. You name it, he bought it. The detectives asked to investigate his strangely spendthrift ways would, though, soon find themselves facing a conundrum. Their big spender was dead. In fact, he had succumbed to a childhood brain disease when seven months old. In total, the identities of hundreds of dead babies would be plundered by businessman Anton Gelonkin in one of the largest identity theft networks uncovered in the UK. Hiding behind the stolen identities of deceased infants, Gelonkin's gang would, in the space of a decade, amass a fortune worth millions. The ease and rapidity with which his team stole so many identities perturbed officers investigating a case which provides a rare insight into the modus operandi of those perpetrating Britain's fastest-growing crime: identity theft.
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