Another ID theft operator gets pinched.
From North Country Gazette:
Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau said that 25-year-old Igor Klopov was sentenced Wednesday to 3 ½ to 10 ½ years in state prison. Klopov, a 24-year-old Russian with an expertise in mining the Internet to obtain personal information about potential victims, was able to gain information easily about the value of property, size of outstanding mortgages and existing lines of credit.
As ringleader of the identity theft ring, Morgenthau said Klopov generally targeted the home equity line of credit (HELOC) accounts of people who owned expensive properties and had large lines of credit.
Among the victims were a Silicon Valley couple, the head of a major credit reporting agency, and a wealthy Texas businessman. Morgenthau said Klopov found many of his victims through the Forbes 400 list. Many of the victims lived in states – such as Texas and California – where property deed information is available online.
And like that, poof, he’s gone. Probably would have been smarter to have gone after smaller fish to avoid detection. Gotta love greed sometimes. It makes smart people foolish. And foolish people dumber than a bag of wet socks.