Blockbuster, 65, Employee Miles N. Holloman
A former employee of a Blockbuster video store in Washington, D.C., has been indicted on charges of stealing customers’ identities, then using them to buy more than $117,000 in trips, electronics and other goods. Miles N. Holloman is charged with stealing credit card numbers, Social Security numbers and other private financial information from the application files of 65 customers, then using the data to open retail store and credit card accounts.
(From The Washington Post, via Privacy.org.)
Sounds like he did most of this without benefit of technology (just read the applications). The typical ‘high tech’ lifting of credit card info seems to be ‘skimmer’ type devices used at retail locations like restaurants.
I am impressed – he managed to buy a car without much trouble using a stolen ‘identity’.
Yep! Easy. Why Blockbuster demands your SSN, rather than taking and authorizing a credit card is beyond me. Seems they’re likely to pay, if DC bothers to tell the 65 victims who was careless with their data, enabling this theft.
This isn’t really identity theft, it’s credit card fraud. Identity theft is what’s done to be able to impersonate someone to open a credit card in their name. Calling this a privacy issue is like claiming that a burgler that breaks into my house and steals $117,000 out of my safe is a privacy issue.
No, its identity theft, or fraud-by-impersonation. The employee took social security numbers and home addresses off the credit applications that Blockbuster requires of their customers. Blockbuster, by getting all that on paper,* and then failing to secure it, Blockbuster contributes to the problem.
*At least they did the last time I was in a blockbuster when someone was signing up, 4 or 5 years ago.