East. The bills claimed that Farina had provided patients with chiropractic services, when they actually had received weight loss and exercise treatments.
The data mining software tool determined that Farina and his business had submitted claims that alleged he had rendered in excess of 49 hours of care to patients on a given day.
Following their federal indictment and subsequent plea agreement, Farina and Inner Health were ordered to pay $109,000 restitution to the local Blue Cross. Inner Health was ordered to stop doing business; Farina was sentenced to six months home confinement , five years probation and forced to surrender his New Jersey and Pennsylvania chiropractic licenses for 10
years.
Other medical ID theft takes a simpler—and more vulgar—form than complex insurance scams. For 104
C H A P T E R 4
example: In September 2002, the wife of a California optometrist was facing criminal charges of stealing credit card numbers from her husband’s patient files and using them to order merchandise on the Internet.
Kim Yasuda, who did office work for her husband, had access to credit card numbers in the files of his patients. Authorities said she used credit card numbers belonging to three patients of her husband, Dr.
Jerry Yasuda. She was charged with three counts of identity theft, two counts of grand theft and one count of computer fraud.
Visalia police reports said Kim Yasuda ordered merchandise in her victims’ names over the Internet, then had the packages delivered to the home of a neighbor who traveled a lot . If the neighbor wasn’t home when a package arrived, she would pick it up.
The items the woman ordered showed a depress-ingly banal taste in ill-gotten goods. They included women’s and children’s clothes, Disney videos, items from Amazon.com and items from www.statelinetack.com , an Internet site selling horse-riding apparel.
C O N C L U S I O N
The mechanical details of ID theft change with circumstances, technology advances and the perverse creativity of crooks. But, in this chapter, we’ve dealt with the basic building blocks of most ID theft schemes:
•
Improper and illegal use of checks and credit cards;
105
T H E M E C H A N I C S O F I D T H E F T
•
Inattentiveness of the victims; •
Trusted or insider status of someone involved in the scheme; •
Quick use of the ill-gotten ID information; •
Smart ID thieves move around a lot; •
Bold ID thieves will contact banks and credit card companies to alter account information;
•
ID thieves are aggressive about using technology ; •
Internet and online merchants create exposure by emphasizing convenience; •
All merchants may share your information more than you realize; and •
Medical information is an overlooked exposure.
106
C H A P T E R 5
5
CHAPTER
ILLEGAL
IMMIGRATION, TERRORISM, DRUGS
AND OTHER CRIMES
Identity theft has long been a side effect of other, more ambitious crimes. Dapper con men may use fake IDs; but so do violent gangbangers, sleazy drug dealers and hungry immigrants desperate for work.
In calendar year 2000, the Social Security Administration (SSA) issued approximately 1.2 million SSNs to non-citizens . While SSNs issued to non-citizens represent only about 20 percent of the total, the volume is significant.
In 2002, the Census Bureau estimated that 8.7 million people resided in the United States illegally. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has estimated that approximately 40 percent of illegal immigrants are visa overstayers while 60 percent entered illegally. Although most illegal immigrants simply want better lives for their families and themselves, their pres-ence has spawned widespread document and identity fraud throughout the U.S.
The immense demand for documents “proving” the right to work in the United States has led to the ex-107
I L L E G A L I M M I G R A T I O N , T E R R O R I S M , D R U G S A N D O T H E R C R I M E S
ploitation of loopholes in
The data mining software tool determined that Farina and his business had submitted claims that alleged he had rendered in excess of 49 hours of care to patients on a given day.
Following their federal indictment and subsequent plea agreement, Farina and Inner Health were ordered to pay $109,000 restitution to the local Blue Cross. Inner Health was ordered to stop doing business; Farina was sentenced to six months home confinement , five years probation and forced to surrender his New Jersey and Pennsylvania chiropractic licenses for 10
years.
Other medical ID theft takes a simpler—and more vulgar—form than complex insurance scams. For 104
C H A P T E R 4
example: In September 2002, the wife of a California optometrist was facing criminal charges of stealing credit card numbers from her husband’s patient files and using them to order merchandise on the Internet.
Kim Yasuda, who did office work for her husband, had access to credit card numbers in the files of his patients. Authorities said she used credit card numbers belonging to three patients of her husband, Dr.
Jerry Yasuda. She was charged with three counts of identity theft, two counts of grand theft and one count of computer fraud.
Visalia police reports said Kim Yasuda ordered merchandise in her victims’ names over the Internet, then had the packages delivered to the home of a neighbor who traveled a lot . If the neighbor wasn’t home when a package arrived, she would pick it up.
The items the woman ordered showed a depress-ingly banal taste in ill-gotten goods. They included women’s and children’s clothes, Disney videos, items from Amazon.com and items from www.statelinetack.com , an Internet site selling horse-riding apparel.
C O N C L U S I O N
The mechanical details of ID theft change with circumstances, technology advances and the perverse creativity of crooks. But, in this chapter, we’ve dealt with the basic building blocks of most ID theft schemes:
•
Improper and illegal use of checks and credit cards;
105
T H E M E C H A N I C S O F I D T H E F T
•
Inattentiveness of the victims; •
Trusted or insider status of someone involved in the scheme; •
Quick use of the ill-gotten ID information; •
Smart ID thieves move around a lot; •
Bold ID thieves will contact banks and credit card companies to alter account information;
•
ID thieves are aggressive about using technology ; •
Internet and online merchants create exposure by emphasizing convenience; •
All merchants may share your information more than you realize; and •
Medical information is an overlooked exposure.
106
C H A P T E R 5
5
CHAPTER
ILLEGAL
IMMIGRATION, TERRORISM, DRUGS
AND OTHER CRIMES
Identity theft has long been a side effect of other, more ambitious crimes. Dapper con men may use fake IDs; but so do violent gangbangers, sleazy drug dealers and hungry immigrants desperate for work.
In calendar year 2000, the Social Security Administration (SSA) issued approximately 1.2 million SSNs to non-citizens . While SSNs issued to non-citizens represent only about 20 percent of the total, the volume is significant.
In 2002, the Census Bureau estimated that 8.7 million people resided in the United States illegally. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has estimated that approximately 40 percent of illegal immigrants are visa overstayers while 60 percent entered illegally. Although most illegal immigrants simply want better lives for their families and themselves, their pres-ence has spawned widespread document and identity fraud throughout the U.S.
The immense demand for documents “proving” the right to work in the United States has led to the ex-107
I L L E G A L I M M I G R A T I O N , T E R R O R I S M , D R U G S A N D O T H E R C R I M E S
ploitation of loopholes in
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