Former FEMA employee steals over 200 Identities
In April 2008 a Washington D.C. man plead guilty to stealing the identities of more than 200 people and defrauding ID Theft Victims and various retailers. The defendant stole the identities while working as a FEMA Human Services Specialist and as a clerk for various mortgage companies. The identity thief, a former Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employee and clerk for various mortgage companies, has pled guilty to stealing personal identification information of over 200 persons, fraudulently opening over $150,000 in credit accounts with various retailers in the names of the victims, and ordering merchandise for himself on these accounts, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor, Special Agent-in-Charge Jeffrey Irvine of the U.S. Secret Service, and Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Chief Cathy L. Lanier announced today.
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The conviction was the result of investigative efforts initiated by the D.C. Metro Area Fraud Task Force, a joint area law enforcement initiative that coordinates fraud investigations by federal authorities, including the U.S. Secret Service, and local law enforcement agencies, including MPD. The 44 year old identity thief, a resident of Southeast Washington D.C., entered his plea of guilty on Friday, April 4, 2008, to one count of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia before the Honorable Judge Reggie B. Walton. He faces a mandatory-minimum of two years of incarceration and maximum sentence of 32 years of incarceration and a $1,000,000 fine, although he is likely to face a sentence of between 51 and 87 months under federal sentencing guidelines.
The identity thief has been held without bond pending his sentencing. According to the Statement of Offense to which the man pled guilty, between December 2003 and November 2007, he stole the identities of over 200 people (”ID Theft Victims”) while working as a clerk at various mortgage companies operating in the District of Columbia area and as a FEMA Human Services Specialist who worked with the victims of natural disasters. The identity thief stole the identities of the ID Theft Victims without the knowledge of his employers by copying their personal information from loan applications the ID Theft Victims had submitted to FEMA or the mortgage companies.
Approximately 30 of the 200 ID Theft Victims had their identities stolen from FEMA, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security after they had submitted their personal information as part of their applications for disaster relief. After obtaining the ID Theft Victims’ personal information, the identity thief called various retailers impersonating the ID Theft Victims and fraudulently opened credit accounts in their names. The criminal used the identities of at least 74 ID Theft Victims to open accounts with The Home Shopping Network, Ginny’s Inc., Shop NBC, QVC, Inc. (collectively, “Retailers”), and he fraudulently obtained credit with these Retailers in excess of $156,257. Impersonating the ID Theft Victims, the identity thief fraudulently ordered dozens of items that were delivered to his home, or other addresses near his home.
The items ordered by the man included gold and diamond jewelry, designer watches, digital cameras, DVDs, Dyson vacuum cleaners, gourmet food (including steaks, lobster, and seafood), lingerie, clothing, jackets, DVD players and other electronic items. After obtaining these items, he would either keep them for personal use or pawn them at pawnshops in and around the Washington, D.C. area. Between December 2003 and November 2007, he pawned dozens of items and obtained over $24,084 in cash from the pawnshops in exchange for the items he fraudulently obtained from the Retailers.
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