The Identity Thief (2 page)

Taking the Long Island Railroad back to Manhattan that afternoon, X congratulated himself on a job well done and phoned ahead to Samantha, his partner in crime and erstwhile girlfriend.

"Any hitches?" she asked.

"Smooth as a baby's bottom," he assured her, while perusing
Bloomberg
on his iPad to see how their stateside investments were performing.

"Hurry back. I've got a surprise for you."

X frowned. He did not like surprises. Indeed, he preferred events to unfold like clockwork according to a meticulously conceived plan of his own design.

Knowing this preference all too well, Samantha hurriedly added, "It's good news. You won't believe what our Homeland Security - "

"Sounds like pillow talk, Sam," he broke in.

"Pillow talk" was their codeword for a topic that should not be discussed over the phone and almost exclusively referred to a criminal enterprise.

"Okay, okay. Get your ass home quick. I'm getting wet just thinking about this thing."

X grinned, pleased by the dueling promises of a major score and afternoon delight. Returning to his iPad, he thought
Life is good.

Mind you, X did not think of himself as an identity thief. Indeed, he bristled at the term - sometimes making the point that a person's identity cannot be stolen.

"Why, it makes about as much sense to speak about stealing a soul," he once observed. He would instead refer to "borrowing" the identities of his marks, a term he preferred to "victim." Among his cohorts, he described himself as a "professional imposter" and took tremendous pride in his chameleon-like ability to alter his appearance and speech patterns.

"An imposter," X lectured Samantha on more than one occasion when waxing philosophical, "practices the highest level of acting. The performance has to be absolutely flawless, because the penalty for failure isn't a bad review, it's a stint in Attica." He sometimes spoke of his "craft" with a kind of reverence one might expect from a long-in-the-tooth member of the Barrymore clan rattling on about the theater.

Of course, X boasted no such impressive lineage. He could be maddeningly cagey when discussing his past with his accomplices. His place of birth, true name and ethnic background were details he never divulged. But, while spooning in the blissful afterglow of his first roll in the hay with Samantha three years ago, he once revealed this much: His immigrant mother had worked as a maid for a series of rich families, and on not one but two occasions she'd been taken advantage of - once in a pantry, once on a freshly mopped kitchen floor.

So he felt he was striking a blow for all those who cleaned the toilets of the hoi polloi, "the little people who drive their limousines and trim their hedges," as he put it. Because he limited his practice to targets who boasted a net worth in excess of $500,000, he felt that he was redistributing wealth.

"We're like Robin Hood and his Merry Men," he once declared, when trying to persuade a reluctant geek in a computer repair department into turning over a disk bearing a copy of a certain celebrity's My Documents file.

X resided in a loft in lower Manhattan leased to "Mel Gallo," a name X rather fancied. There existed, as one might guess, a real Mel Gallo, who had been unfortunate enough to pass X in a crowded New Jersey restaurant 11 months earlier. This fellow patron's wallet contained several RFID-enabled credit cards and a Veteran's Administration ID card. A radio frequency identification chip on these cards allows data such as the bank name and account number - and the vet's Social Security number - to be read a short distance away.

This makes transactions smoother than with cards that rely on magnetic strips. It also allowed the identity thief's handy-dandy little scanner to pick up the information four feet away from the real Mel Gallo.

Honestly, it was little more than an updated form of good old-fashioned "shoulder-surfing" - standing next to an old lady at a checkout line and memorizing her name, address, and bank information as she scribbled out a check (to the annoyance of the growing line behind her). But X found this much more dignified and hoped to get a good deal of mileage from the little gizmo before more people wised up and turned to the new, electronically shielded wallets.

The apartment was on the fifth floor, accessed by an old-fashioned elevator that rattled unnervingly as it crawled up. But X, who was a bit claustrophobic, preferred to trot up the stairwell, eerily lit though it was.

Their digs were far from luxurious, surprisingly Spartan one might even say, because they were prepared to skip town at a moment's notice - bags were packed in a closet. A genuine Miro obtained a year earlier in an auction-house scam was one of their few extravagances, along with a few choice pieces of antique furniture.

No, rather than invest in pricey furnishings, designer clothes or luxury autos, they stashed most of their funds in the Cayman Islands, while rolling the dice with some small change on Wall Street. One associate of X's, a retired flimflam man in his late 80s, scolded him that this frugal approach was folly.

"Spend it while you've got it," the wizened old Irishman advised between puffs on a cigar. "That way, if you end up in jail, at least you'll have memories of having lived like a king."

But X had no more intention of winding up in prison than becoming Emperor of Japan. He was, so he thought, far cleverer than any lawman.

As soon as he opened the door, Samantha, blond and voluptuous to the verge of being pleasantly plump, rolled away from the computer where she did the majority of her work, hopped off the swivel chair and wrapped her fleshy arms around him.

"Where have you been?"

"The trains were slow."

She sniffed his collar.

"You didn't stop off at some old girlfriend's, did you?"

He sighed. "Yes, I confess. Jessica Alba and I spent 20 minutes knocking boots. And I have to say, she's not all she's cracked up to be. So a three-way is out."

She smacked his shoulder with mock anger and they kissed.

When not accusing her partner of infidelity, Samantha had the perky manner of a morning news personality. She projected sufficient warmth to easily convince people to surrender the most personal information over the phone. When she called potential targets posing as a representative of the IRS and said, "I have to verify to whom I'm speaking. What is your Social Security number?" they'd typically comply without hesitation.

Although her flair for dialects was by no means as impressive as X's, she could pull off regional accents well enough to sound like your next-door neighbor, whether she was calling Boston or Mississippi. Even when she posed as a debt collector, homeowners would readily spill their entrails. When talking to a man, her voice would become so sweet even the gruffest old curmudgeon would melt.

Apart from phone work, Samantha spent most of her time at the computer, creating impeccable dummy Web pages, and deluging the Internet with emails sent to potential marks - phishing as it was dubbed by authorities.

Perhaps due in part to her sedentary "job," she was 15 pounds overweight and insecure about it. She tended to become hysterical if X eyed the legs of a pretty girl on the street. She once pouted for a day when he opined that J.Lo had a nice butt, as if this were somehow a veiled commentary on her own derriere.

Yet - and X would never admit this to a soul - there came a certain security in having a woman that not every young stud was banging down doors to bang.

"Okay, okay," X demanded. "What's got you so fired up you blab over the phone like some kind of newbie."

"Take a look at this," she said, eagerly leading him to the computer terminal. "You'll never believe who we hooked in the Homeland Security hustle."

Many low-level identity thieves relied on dumpster diving - retrieving documents that victims had failed to shred, such as bank statements, preapproved credit card applications and deposit slips. Although this remained a staple of their trade, X and Samantha used far more sophisticated techniques for gathering information. And they typically kept their hands clean, employing a trio of underlings - interns, X called them fondly.

One intern's duty was to make dental appointments around town and sit in the waiting room innocently Twittering and answering emails. While doing so, he would "sniff" for a poorly secured network; medical offices rarely had much security. Once the office computers were accessed, a treasure trove of patient Social Security numbers, addresses and other information was ripe for the taking. X often used the info to file tax returns in the patient's name, collecting an average $6,000 a pop on refunds from Uncle Sam.

Another intern's assignment was to hang out at the big bookstores and wait for some poor soul to log onto the free WiFi on what marks believed to be the store's network. They were, of course, on X's lookalike network, and those who used the time to pay bills online later found their accounts drained dry.

One very fruitful scam was to send out
en masse
(sometimes as many as 300,000 in one wave) emails ostensibly from the mark's bank, warning that there had been a security breach and asking for verification of personal bank account information. A hyperlink imbedded in the email, when clicked upon, whisked the victim to what appeared to be the bank's Web site. The spoofed sites, as they were called in the trade, looked entirely authentic because Samantha loaded them with official-looking logos ripped off from the real bank's Web site.

In a lucrative variation of this scheme, Samantha would phone, claiming to be from the state superior court, politely but firmly warning people that they'd shirked jury duty. To avoid fine or arrest for contempt of court, the marks must cooperate by immediately turning over personal information such as their Social Security number.

In one of X's most lucrative operations, he ripped off the identities of inmates whom he contacted under the guise of a lawyer working pro bono on their court cases. Through correspondence, he gleaned enough personal data to apply for student loans using the inmates' identities. X assumed more than 50 aliases to rake in about $250,000 in federal student grants and loans over a three-year period.

In the opinion of X, this particular operation was a victimless crime. At the most he had sullied the reputation of murderers, rapists and other criminals who could hardly be too concerned about their good names.

But it was the follow-up hustle that really filled him with self-admiration. A paid-off clerk at the FBI fingerprint office intercepted a request for one of the inmates' fingerprints. He substituted X's prints, which Samantha had emailed to him in a PDF file. The switched prints, along with a few forged documents, helped X to assume the identity of the criminal. He walked right into a court building and waltzed out with $90,000 in assets the authorities couldn't prove the guy had embezzled and had intended to return.

This, X preached to his crew, was "poetic justice."

In their latest gambit, initiated just last week, about 3,000 emails had been sent to resident aliens from Muslim nations, as well as to visitors who'd recently had their visas approved. A sternly worded letter ostensibly from the Department of Homeland Security warned them that they were being investigated for possible links to Al-Qaeda. They were directed to a Web site where they were asked to provide detailed information about their assets, financial transactions, charitable donations, etc.

"Have I got a live one for you," Samantha declared, gleefully steering him toward the computer screen. Her voice was giddy and her face was flushed. Getting Samantha to achieve orgasm in bed was an exhausting chore but the intense thrill she got from larceny was almost scary. She pointed triumphantly to the screen as a name materialized.

"Ali Nazeer," she read. "He's a filthy rich Kuwaiti playboy who visits the States once in a blue moon. When he does, he blows through money like there's no tomorrow. Luxury cars, yachts, jewelry and fur coats for his wives, concubines, girlfriends, hos and whoever. He also gambles recklessly and has a history of making enormous wire transfers to cover his losses."

X smiled. This was right up his alley: The target was clearly an asshole who richly deserved to be parted from his riches, or at least a significant portion of them.

Samantha continued. "Here's the sweet part, X. Virtually no one in the country knows what Mr. Moneybags looks like. He's been written up in all the London and European tabloids, but he's notoriously camera shy."

She clicked to another window, revealing a page from the
London Sun
crammed with screeching headlines all vying for attention. One large headline read, "Harem Scarem: Arab Playboy Adds Movie Scream Queen to His Stable." The photo showed a bosomy British starlet who, as far as X could glean from his quick glance at the article, had dumped her rock star boyfriend for Nazeer. The curvaceous crumpet stood arm in arm with a turbaned man whose back was to the camera as he directed her attention to his Arabian stallion.

"You see, just pictures of her, never his face," Sam went on. "The last publicly available photograph of him, which I got after a lot of Googling, was taken when he was a student at Kuwait University at the age of 19." She held it up. "Look like anyone we know?"

The group photo, taken outside of what appeared to be a dormitory, was fuzzy, but with the large somber dark eyes, heavy brows and prominent nose, he could easily have been X as a teen. Nevertheless, X mockingly protested.