By the time the New York identity theft fraud case was solved,over 30,000 people had suffered a total combined loss of over $2.7million. This money had been stolen by a ring of New York residentswho had accessed the victims’ credit information and exploited thatinformation to steal the victims’ identity. The fraud began whenLinus Baptiste approached Philip Cummings about a plan to steal andsell people’s personal information. Philip Cummings had begun towork at Teledata Communications, Inc., a third-partycredit-reporting agency that facilitates the retrieval of credithistory data. Teledata had outstanding contracts with over 25,000companies, allowing these companies to check on thecreditworthiness of potential customers, thus creating a directline past the three main credit bureaus. As a customer servicerepresentative, Cummings had obtained access to many confidentialaccess codes. These access codes were used by the clients ofTeledata to gain approval on credit requests. With access to thesecodes, Cummings had the opportunity to commit fraud. In early 2013,Cummings and Baptiste began to steal credit reports. The twofraudsters sold this information to a group of Nigeriannationalists. The Nigerian nationalists would pay up to $60 for oneperson’s infor mmation. After some time, the Nigerian nationalistsbegan to provide the two fraudsters with names and Social Securitynumbers to help facilitate the process even further. To convert theinformation into money, the Nigerian nationalists would use theinformation to gain access to the victim’s bank accounts and otherfinancial information. The group of Nigerian national- ists wouldthen take the following steps: Deplete the bank accounts of thevictims through wire transfers. Change the addresses of theaccounts so the cur- rent information was not sent to the victim.Order new checks to be written off of the victim’s bank accounts.Order new ATM cards so the money could be taken out in cash. Ordernew credit cards under the victim’s name. Establish new lines ofcredit under the victim’s name. By using these techniques, thefraud ring was able to steal over $2.7 million from consumers. Thismoney was stolen over a period of about three years. The mostintriguing aspect of the fraud was that Cummings quit working atTeledata half way through the fraud period, but was able tocontinue to steal the informa- tion for an additional two years.Cummings claimed that most of the access codes he had stolen whilework- ing at Teledata remained unchanged for the full two yearsafter he left the company. After three years, Cummings began to getgreedy and his greed led to the detection of fraud. Perceiving thathe needed to make more money, Cummings stole around 15,000 creditreports from Teledata by using the access codes of Ford MotorCompany. Then for the next four months, Cummings again stole alarge number of names. This time, Cummings used the access codes ofWashington Mutual Bank to steal 6,000 credit reports. Finally,three months later, Cummings made what would be his last big creditreport theft. Using the access codes of Central Texas EnergySupply, Cummings was able to steal 4,500 credit reports. After thetheft using Ford’s access codes, Equifax, one of the three largecredit bureaus in the United States, began to see the requestspikes in Ford’s account. After the next two large batches ofrequests, Equifax decided to investigate further. Equifax foundthat almost all of the credit report requests came from one phonenumber, and that the requests were done in large batches of about100. The location of the phone number was found, and a search byfederal authorities turned up a computer and other equipment thatwere used in the fraud.2 Cummings was prosecuted, sent to prison,and had to pay large fines. The victims faced the dreadful task ofrestoring their credit, a process that, in some cases, took a longtime to complete. Questions Assuming you are an agent with theFederal Bureau of Investigation, do the following: 1. Plan andcoordinate an investigation in a manner that would not arousesuspicion from Cummings and Baptiste. 2. Create a vulnerabilitychart to coordinate the various elements of the possible fraud. 3.Assuming your investigation used surveillance and/ or covertinvestigation techniques, what types of surveillance and/or covertoperations would you use? How would technology play a role in thispart of the investigation? 4. Finally, how would analysis ofphysical evidence help in this investigation? What types ofphysical evidence would be especially helpful?
