Experian/Vietnamese Identity Thief: Allegation of Harm

[thewayne]

An Experian executive said before Congress, presumably under oath, that there were no allegations of harm for the fullz information dumps that a company acquired by them and sold to this Vietnamese thief, who stupidly went to Guam and got arrested.

Well, here's some harm shown in charges by the federal government against an Ohio man.

The man, Lance Ealy, reached out to Krebs because the prosecutor was failing to turn over evidence that his email was used to buy over 300 fullz packages that were then used to file fraudulent tax returns with the IRS. He now faces a 40+ count indictment and could be sentenced to 20 years in prison.

I don't know if Ealy is innocent or guilty, his email could have been hijacked without him knowing it. Regardless, it does demonstrate that the Feds know that, through this Vietnamese identity theft provider, that fraudulent tax returns were filed as a result of the information sold, thus proving the Experian exec's claims that no one was harmed to be blatantly false.

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/04/an-allegation-of-harm

Comments

[silveradept]

Despite this proof, will Experian actually be required to compensate the victims? Signs point to no.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

It probably won't be anything more than the standard 'one free year of credit monitoring!' which is almost worse than nothing as it does almost nothing to prevent actual credit/identity theft.

[silveradept]

Seriously. If an actual fine were levied, it would be better and get companies to think a bit more securely. Let's start at the million-dollar level per record stolen, and then multiply exponentially for each record that could be proven to have been used in theft or fraud.