U.S. Attorney Patrick L. Meehan says he wants five-year terms for a young Center City couple who used the good names and credit of others to finance a yearlong, $119,000 spending spree.

The Inquirer reports that Meehan called Jocelyn S. Kirsch and Edward K. Anderton the “poster children for identity theft.” The couple targeted strangers, coworkers, neighbors and friends. Their victims included another couple from whom they stole information, first when they were guests and later when they robbed their hosts’ home.

The criminal complaint against the couple outlined their activities, which ranged from stealing purses at a Center City bar to establishing multiple accounts under different names and wearing disguises to withdraw money from some of those bank accounts. The couple would buy time to make illegal credit card purchases by calling the victims of purse-snatchings and telling them that the bag had been taken accidentally or had been found by police and would be returned.

Apparently, they went on a massive shopping spree with the stolen cash. Kirsch and Anderton allegedly used the money to fund trips to Paris, Hawaii, Florida, Montreal and the Caribbean between November 2006 and last December.

Both defendants live on the West Coast but are expected back in the coming weeks for an as-yet-unscheduled court appearance.

According to the Idaho Statesman, on July 1, 2008, Idaho will join 40 other states in allowing consumers to freeze their credit reports. A law passed during the 2008 legislative session will prohibit anyone from opening any kind of credit in someone else’s name as a way to avoid identity theft.

Residents can temporarily lift the freeze when they want to apply for credit. There will be a $6 fee to freeze or temporarily lift the freeze, unless they have been victimized and have a police report, in which case the freeze will be free. Stopping the freeze altogether will be free after July 1.

“There is no magic formula that will protect Idaho residents from identity theft,” said Department of Finance Director Gavin Gee. “However, a credit freeze is an indispensible element of any state’s identity theft-fighting strategy.”

The New York Times reported that, in the biggest workplace immigration raid this year, federal agents raided AgriProcessors, a kosher meat plant in Postville, Iowa, and arrested more than 300 workers.

The police said that the workers were suspected of being in the United States illegally or of having participated in identity theft and the fraudulent use of Social Security numbers.

The plant shut down temporarily.

According to two Canadian security experts, personal and corporate identity theft is increasingly commonplace, and better corporate policies are needed in order to help combat this issue.

According to Claudiu Popa, president of Toronto-based Informatica Corp., says on its own, security software is not enough to prevent identity theft because sometimes it’s the administrative staff who will leak out important business information and/or records.
Popa said a reliance on security technology and software will only get one so far when it comes to security and protection of assets, as it’s easy for a thief to obtain any necessary information just by stealing an organization’s domain name and then re-routing all traffic to another Web site to then access the desired files and information.

David Senf, director of research, security and infrastructure software at IDC Canada, said the problem of identity theft also occurs from a business level too, since the majority of them he said, do not have formal policies in place for its employees.

According to the San Jose Mercury News, a Silicon Valley gas station and grocery store have been targeted in two major cases of identity theft using stolen personal information from debit cards. The number of victims topped 200 last week, and police warned to expect more.

The identity theft scam hit the Lunardi’s grocery store in Los Gatos and an Arco gas station on San Antonio Road in Los Altos. At the store, police said the thieves may have swapped a debit-card-reading machine at one or more of the store’s checkout stands, or installed small, easily hidden skimming devices that collect a shopper’s card number and personal identification codes. The thieves then typically use the information to make new debit cards, often out of gift cards, old credit cards or any card with a magnetic strip.