The Identity Thief (3 page)

"Oh, come on - is my schnoz really that big?"

"Trust me, it is."

X grinned. For starters, that would make forging a passport and an international driver's license a cinch.

"Well, you've got my attention," he said. "What's his net worth?"

"$6.2 billion."

"Did you say
billion
?"

"Billion."

"You're kidding me."

"No, his father was some kind of shipping tycoon whose specialty was building yachts for the royal family. Ali was the sole heir. And he's managed to burn through only about a third of it since his old man kicked the bucket seven years ago. Which makes him a skinflint by international playboy standards, I guess."

X did some quick math in his head (that was another of his gifts). Assuming that they didn't rob Nazeer blind, desirable though that might be, but managed to bilk him of even 1 percent of his fortune, that would still be a cool $60 million.

He hugged her and as her big bosom crushed against him, he wasn't surprised to find that she had what his female Generation Y intern had once somewhat provocatively termed "a titty boner". (X didn't much go in for such vulgar slang).

He could hardly blame her for being aroused; the thought of a rip-off of this magnitude made even the usually cool-as-ice X lightheaded. Sam had always been a good "catcher," grifter lingo for the person who finds a mark. But this time she had outdone herself.

"You know what that means?" he exclaimed. "We've hit the jackpot, Honey Hips. One last score and we're retired and living in Sri Lanka."

This was a private joke of course. Sometimes they'd say Madagascar, sometimes Nepal, sometimes Outer Mongolia. In actuality, they both knew they enjoyed the game, needed the game, too much to give it up. But they talked this way every time they struck what appeared to be the mother lode.

"Guess I'm going to have to brush up on my Arabic - and grow a beard," he said.

A few moments later, forgoing the formality of fully undressing, they were doing the horizontal mambo on the scuffed hardwood floor, X with his trousers around his ankles and Samantha with her dress hoisted up to her waist and thong hauled to one side. Samantha insisted on being called names for the duration of the act - not that he simply talk dirty, but that he lambaste her as a "dirty slut" and other increasingly filthy and demeaning epithets as she approached the peak of passion.

Perhaps Samantha wanted to be punished, X sometimes mused afterward. But what did he know? He was no psychoanalyst. In any event, this night's frenzied lovemaking session was one of their most intense in months, fueled by the promise of the vast riches awaiting them.

Over the next few weeks, based on personal data Ali Nazeer had so graciously and unwittingly provided, they went to work recreating key personal documents including a passport, international driver's license and two credit cards. Among the pieces of information the real Nazeer had revealed in their phishing expedition were his driver's license number and his passport number. An associate of X's - you would probably call him an accomplice but X thought of him as a subcontractor - provided the identity thief with a blank Kuwaiti passport purchased from a contact at the embassy for a price of $2,000.

X viewed this as an investment. Beginning with an authentic blank passport, it was child's play to forge either a paper or plastic passport, even to duplicate a hologram-protected image. "When filled out correctly, a blank passport is impossible to detect," X lectured the interns more than once.

X was amply equipped to carry out the task himself, but for a job this big - with so much money on the line and no room for error - he felt it was worth it to farm the work out to a specialist. X knew at once whom he wanted for the job: An ancient Italian master named D'Amato who worked out of a room above a pizza parlor in Little Italy. He had started out making funny money during the Depression, apprenticing under a counterfeiter who churned out bogus $5 bills.

D'Amato had promised X the passport would be ready by 5 p.m. that Friday. X arrived an hour early because he loved to watch the old man work. Bent, gray and wrinkled as a prune, D'Amato was a master craftsman. It was like watching some old-world violin repairman tune a Stradivarius.

X watched, fascinated, as D'Amato fed a blank passport into a laser printer. The most common error of amateurs, X knew, was to print out a blank stolen passport in the wrong typeface. D'Amato would make no such errors.

"Patience is the key," the old man informed X for the perhaps the 20th time.

The trickiest part was to recreate the official government seal, the inkless stamp that leaves an embossed image on paper.

X watched with fascination as the old man placed an old vinyl record - A Tony Bennett LP - over a passport marked with a real seal, then heating the record with an iron, took an imprint. He then pressed the record onto the bogus passport - and when he withdrew it, a perfect duplicate of the seal appeared, raised and all.

"Most of these young wannabe scratchers out there today have never even held a vinyl record, let alone know how to do anything like this," D'Amato grumbled. "Without their Macs, they'd be helpless."

X loved to hear about such tricks of the trade.

"In the old days, we would cut a fresh potato in half and use it to transfer a stamp from one passport to another," D'Amato said. "Today most young folks put all their faith in computers. THIS is perfect." He kissed his handiwork for emphasis.

The duplicate of Ali Nazeer's 2007 passport didn't require the insertion of an RFID chip - it was made before the widespread use of electronic passports. All that was needed was a magnetic stripe and bar code.

It made X a bit sad to think that in this high-tech era, with paperless identification such as retinal scans growing in popularity, D'Amato would soon be obsolete and would probably be puttering around in his daughter's garden in a few years. On the other hand, X expected that the trend would be a boon to identity thieves such as himself. He and his colleagues were already using their wireless scanners to read e-passports at close range - electronically pickpocketing airport passengers of their passport information.

In any event, Al Nazeer's real passport had been issued long enough ago that the old-school approach was just what the doctor ordered.

D'Amato handed X the dummy Al Nazeer passport and the genuine Kuwaiti one he'd used as a model. Except for the names, passport number and salient data - which X double-checked for accuracy - the fake travel document was indistinguishable from the real McCoy.

"Great work as usual, Tony," he said, handing over an envelope stuffed with cash.

X was satisfied with the result. There are more than a dozen different versions of the United States passport alone in circulation. It would take a bona fide passport scholar to be able to detect the difference between a real and a fake Kuwaiti passport.

The mark, X was able to ascertain by running a game on a Kuwaiti airline staffer, wasn't scheduled to visit America again for another two months. That gave them nearly 60 days for X to impersonate him, and hopefully, suck up his money like a vacuum cleaner.

To get a fuller picture of Al Nazeer, Samantha phoned his credit card company fraud prevention number, claiming to be the fat cat's executive secretary. Informing the customer service representative that her boss was concerned that there was suspicious activity on the account, she requested detailed records of the credit-card use for the past six months. Samantha asked that the material be Fedexed overnight to the front desk of Manhattan's exclusive Mayflower Hotel where Mr. Nazeer was staying. The concerned customer service rep agreed to oblige.

X, who'd checked in as Nazeer, collected the documents the next day. He called back and reassured the credit-card rep that all the charges were legit - and provided updated information on how to contact him if any new suspicious activity cropped up.

The credit-card statements spoke volumes.

The Kuwaiti was a gourmand with a weakness for French cuisine. He golfed; he tipped lavishly. He had an Internet account he used to keep in daily contact with business associates and frequently gambled online. He had a penchant for Western call girls and, apparently, great confidence in his own stamina because he generally paid for two at a time. Although he was a bon vivant, he was a teetotaler; no champagne or wine had been ordered by room service.

"It amazes me how these Arabs can be so uptight when it comes to booze, but are such big fans of whores and strippers," Samantha observed. "Remember those 9/11 hijackers; how they spent their last night on Earth getting lap dances at a titty bar?"

"Never underestimate the appeal of a pair of big of American hooters," X said, tweaking her right nipple playfully.

Within two weeks, X had Ali Nazeer's driver's license, passport, and the numbers of his bank accounts in New York, London, Dubai and Riyadh. More than enough to execute their plan.

In most identity-theft rings, the culprit who actually exposes himself to risk by purchasing goods under the stolen name is a peon at the bottom of the pecking order - akin to a drug mule who transports contraband stuffed up ... well, you know where. But X took pride in his ability to play almost any role. He would rarely trust anyone else in the crew to be the inside man. Besides, of course, in this case he had the advantage of that fortunate resemblance.

D'Amato's passport did the trick. X used it to fly to England, then back to the States five days later. (Ali Nazeer's U.S. visa, thanks to a bogus letter to the State Department, had been rerouted to X's P.O. box.) He strode through McCarren International Airport outside Las Vegas without so much as a raised eyebrow from the officer at the immigration desk.

X arrived at the Giza Hotel and Casino in a sleek white limo rented on one of Al Nazeer's credit cards. Although rather hirsute, his attempt at growing a respectable beard in time had not been successful. The result was by no means as long and flowing as the role demanded, but instead resembled a scraggly cross between that of Yasser Arafat and Shaggy from
Scooby Doo.
So he'd shaved and simply applied a pricey but extremely convincing theatrical beard. He wore a turban with a business suit; full Arab regalia would draw undue attention, he decided.

He came accompanied by two swarthy lugs with a combined weight of 520 pounds, who carted in his six suitcases, giving the bellhops fierce "Don't even think about it" looks when they raced to the curb to help.

When casting these roles, X chose a pair of brothers, Bahador and Babak, who looked the part, although they were Egyptian. Their day jobs were at a car wash and the only camel they'd ever seen was on a cigarette carton. Since theirs were nonspeaking roles, this didn't trouble X very much.

Even in a city whose name is virtually synonymous with garishness, the Giza stood out. It was housed in a giant bronze pyramid that climbed 350 feet into the desert sky and was crowned with the world's brightest beam of light: a laser light beam that, the hotel's brochures boasted, could be seen 62 miles up in space. A replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza built to approximately three-quarters scale, the hotel was an enormous 36-story marvel of engineering that "rivals the original," PR materials claimed. That assertion was somewhat preposterous to X's way of thinking.

The spectacular lobby was a recreation of an actual temple dedicated to Osiris, featuring four colossal statues of the god. Tours were available of a replica of King Tut's tomb, also on the premises. A placard advertised a floor show in the Cleopatra Room, featuring half-naked belly dancers. The comedian Carrot Top would also be performing five nights a week.

Despite the huge throng of people of all nationalities, shapes and sizes surging through the lobby, X and his entourage didn't need to stand in line. There were at least a dozen reception clerks at the ready and one signaled to Ali and his men to approach. The clerk, a rail-thin woman with an obscure accent that would baffle most Americans, but which X instantly identified as Armenian, asked for his reservation number. When he provided it, his name popped up on her screen almost instantly. She gawked as if he were a movie star.

"It is certainly the greatest honor to serve you, sir," the desk clerk announced. "We have you in the Pharaoh Suite. I'm certain you'll enjoy it. Have you stayed with us before?"

"No." X had made sure of that, for obvious reasons.

"And you've reserved a second suite?"

"My wives and their servants will be arriving in a few days," X informed her in a cultured British accent with just the slightest hint of Mideast, subtle as a desert breeze. The real Nazeer, X had learned thorough his research, had attended boarding school in Great Britain and spoke the King's English better than Prince Charles.

"Certainly. There is an adjoining suite we can open up for your use when they arrive. To complete the check-in process I just need to see a photo ID, plus a credit card for incidentals."

He produced his passport and a forged platinum MasterCard.