Real Identity Theft

We have a new low in criminal conduct with the plea deal of Leah Shanae Elliott, of Clinton Maryland, the last of 15 members of a gang of identity thieves. [see  http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/15th-member-washington-dc-based-identity-theft-ring-pleads-guilty ]  This woman convinced her mother who worked at a children's hospital to steal information about the parents of 78 children who were being treated there.  She, and the others, then used this information and a good bit more collected from skimmers, credit cards at work places,  and the usual places for such things, and made lines of credit which they used to buy things for themselves.

It is bad enough to have a child in the hospital.  It is worse to have a person on staff at that hospital stealing information that is supposed to be protected by the hospital.  It is the same with waiters and waitresses at places we eat, banks, credit unions, medical and dental centers, local businesses and non-profits, all places where this gang got their information.  If we can't trust the people who serve us in businesses and public service organizations, then we seem to have gotten away from the most basic kind of employee integrity.

In my very first job, an employee was stealing from the cash register in amounts of $5 to $10.  He certainly didn't need the money, but it was an easy thing to do and he got caught by a sharp-eyed coworker and the boss.  We were all glad to see him go.  The hotel was the only one effected, since they didn't take him to the police.  There would never be a record of what he did and he could go on to do it somewhere else.

It is a little different when employees steal information that is being used to establish a line of credit and use it to buy goods in someone else's name.  They got driver's licenses and lines of credit with no more than information they stole.  States facilitate the establishment of identity with fraudulent information.

They are not stealing from the people who employ them, and those people may not even have any liability for what their employees did when the individuals violated the trust of their position.  Those places need to do more with pre-employment screening and information protection, though there seems to be little incentive to do so.  State license facilities need to do more with who they issue driver's licenses.  In Maryland, where she came from, an illegal alien can get a driver's license now.  It isn't hard and it doesn't require much proof of who you are.  These places make it easy to be in the business of identity theft.  They make it easy to be an illegal alien too, but that is another matter.

Identity theft is a global problem because we make it easy to get information, and steal from the rest of us.  There are all kinds of rules about the protection of privacy information in hospitals and public places, but all of them depend on the trustworthiness of employees and we do less and less on that end of the process.  Take a look at some of your own states' laws on employment screening.  It is barely possible to check past employment, let alone find court convictions and firings.  In five years or less, when this group is out of jail, I'm sure they won't find it hard to go somewhere else and start over.  Maybe Maryland's new governor can help change that in his own jurisdiction, but there will be plenty of other places they can go when they get out.