Here’s a story which involved an elaborate return fraud scheme:
California Attorney General Jerry Brown announced on Monday the arrest of a Texas couple on suspicion of bilking high-end retailers up and down the state, including in the Bay Area, of more than $375,000.
Terrance Malone, 32, and Varee Hayes-Malone, 32, were arraigned Monday in San Diego County Superior Court after being arrested in San Diego on Thursday.
According to prosecutors, the couple defrauded retailers such as Pottery Barn, Williams-Sonoma and Victoria’s Secret using a complicated scheme involving purchasing and returning items multiple times with multiple credit and debit cards.
While the scheme itself was interesting, what’s appalling is their arrest warrant gives out so much personal information it sets up the couple for identity theft. Considering they’ll probably be going to prison, it’ll probably go unnoticed for years.
The usual address, date of birth, etc. is freely and intentionally provided on their arrest warrant. However unintentionally their social security numbers are provided also. On the last page of arrest warrant, whatever genius handled them decided to just put a black box over the text. This does not remove the text at all in Adobe. Simply highlighting and pasting the “censored” text somewhere else allows even a 6 year old to figure out their SSNs. Couple this information with their full names, date of births, current residence and you have recipe for identity theft.
edit: Looks like they realized their goof and removed the document entirely.
