Secret Service Operative Moonlights as Identity Thief
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Brett Shannon Johnson is a credit-card and identity thief. In five years of crime, the 37-year-old estimates he's stolen about $2 million -- some of it while working as a paid informant for the U.S. Secret Service.
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When former CIA man Mike Baker wants a nostalgia fix, he can choose among spy vs. spy vs. spy &#151; the TV series "Alias," "24" and, on assignment from Britain, "MI-5." While "24" fans savor the adrenaline rush and "Alias" fans marvel at its conspiracies and how Jennifer Garner deftly matches wardrobe to mission without a stylist, Baker prefers the relative realism of "MI-5."
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The new model of the British secret agent is neither suave nor funny. But he has his charms
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James Bond's next mission is on hold as producers search for an actor to play the secret agent.
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A US-led operation targeting ID fraud crooks has led to the arrest of 28 people across seven countries this week. The arrests follow an undercover operation headed by US Secret Service agents that successful
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US authorities turn to Scotland Yard's expertise to catch one of the most wanted men in America.
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Disguised con artists want your personal information -- and you may be offering it to them.
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ChoicePoint Inc., an information industry giant that became an all-purpose commercial source of personal information about Americans, is transforming itself into a private intelligence service for national security and law enforcement tasks.
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Criminals are not the only ones profiting from identity theft; financial institutions are making money, too.
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Logged in to check e-mail or the news on one of those hotel business center computers? A Colombian man has been convicted of an identity-theft scheme in which he planted keylogging software on machines around the country, lifting personal information from hundreds of American travelers.
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A series of subpoenas issued to reporters as part of the Justice Department's investigation of the leak of a CIA operative's identity seems more like a tactic of intimidation than legitimate information gathering. Commentary by Adam L. Penenberg.
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Not just for phone hackers anymore, a California entrepreneur hopes to sell bill collectors and private investigators on the virtues of spoofing.
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The Oscar-nominated spy film stands out because its characters are allowed to be more than mere plot devices.
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Senator from Illinois known simply as 'renegade' to US secret service, it emerges.
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James Bond&#39;s next mission has been delayed while makers search for the perfect person to play the top spy. Pierce Brosnan may yet play the secret agent again, but no actor has been officially signed up to play the part.
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Forget the Patriot Act and overactive spooks. It&#39;s your TV that could have the Feds knocking at your door. Chris van Rossman earlier this month learned this lesson when Air Force staffers, a policeman and
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If you&#39;re a convicted identity thief, you&#39;ve got about a 50 percent chance of avoiding jail time.That&#39;s one of the findings of a new study of closed U.S. Secret Service case files, released Monday by Utica College&#39;s Center for Identity Management and Information Protection. This is the first time researchers have been allowed to sift through the Secret Service&#39;s data. The study&#39;s authors based their findings on an&#160;analysis of 500 closed Secret Service cases.&quot;Prosecutors had a slightly better chance of sending a convicted identity thief to prison than not (51 percent) and could expect to see the imprisoned offender sentenced to three years or less of incarceration,&quot; the report said.The college has been working with a number of partners, including the Secret Service, IBM, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, since the Center&#39;s creation in mid-2006 to study the methods used by ID thieves and to help corporations and law enforcement prevent this type of crime.Technology like printers, mobile phones, and computers were used in about half of the cases, but the Internet was the exclusive tool of ID thieves only about 10 percent of the time.Identity theft is concentrated in the northeastern and southern United States, the study found. And the majority of the offenders in the Secret Service cases were African-American; more than two-thirds of all offenders were male.The study also found that ID thieves tended to hit people that they did not know, rather than preying on friends and relatives. A family member or friend was the victim in 16 percent of cases. In about a third of the cases, the theft was an inside job, with the data being stolen from an employer.Identity theft is a well-studied phenomenon, but it&#39;s unusual for a survey to be based on this kind of closed-case data. &quot;This study is significant because it did not depend on self-reported or survey data,&quot; the authors wrote.The median loss from identity theft was just over $31,000, but in one case, investigated by the Secret Service&#39;s Dallas field office, the defendant spent millions on luxury vehicles and then managed to set up shell companies and defraud investors. Total losses: $13 million. &quot;In general,&quot; however, &quot;the more offenders involved in the case, the higher the victim loss,&quot; the study stated.According to Javelin Strategy &amp; Research, identity theft cost U.S.businesses and consumers an estimated $49.3 billion in 2006.&#160;