Inmate Ran Identity Theft Ring From Prison Cell

"The sheer brazenness of this criminal enterprise is incredible"
according to Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox upon the
sentencing of an inmate who orchestrated a sophisticated
identity theft empire from his jail cell.

Involving thousands of stolen names and social security
numbers (ssn), the prison inmate ring leader's arrest resulted
from his attempt to defraud Michigan taxpayers out of "hundreds
of thousands" of dollars in state tax funds earmarked for low
income renters.

The criminal ring leader, from his jail cell, managed to gain
control of confidential consumer information he used to direct
his accomplices to file hundreds of fraudulent homestead
property tax claims with the Michigan Treasury Department.

When the inmate's identity theft ring was busted, hundreds of
Michigan Treasury refund checks were in the process
of being sent to various addresses in Detroit.

Not surprisingly many of the addresses did not
actually exist, but they all had a change of address
card filed with the U.S. Post Office for mail to be
forwarded to a P.O. box in a nearby Detroit suburb.

What is surprising - the post office box was
rented by a company which was incorporated
by the inmate while he was in prison!

So, our tip for today is to remember identity theft can come
from just about any imagineable direction. Even criminals
who are behind prison bars can still inflict serious
harm to your financial future.

That's why it's important to not only setup an automatic
alerting system for your banking accounts, but also regularly
screen for those other serious types of identity theft
which no credit report was ever designed to catch.

Get your public information profile scrutinized
twice per year just to insure your good name has not already
been victimized by the criminal master minds behind identity
theft.