Identity Theft

A 24-year-old Laurel man was indicted this week on charges related to the alleged identity theft of 10 people, many of who worked at Arbitron Inc. in Columbia. A Howard County grand jury returned an 18-count indictment Wednesday against Mobolaji Olanite of the 300 block of Thomas Drive. The indictment charges him with fraud, theft and forgery, as well as the alleged assault on the Howard County police officer who confronted him at the 1st Mariner Bank in Ellicott City after bank officials reported a possible fraud March 12. Authorities found documents containing at least three people's names in Olanite's car, according to charging documents.

With the rise in identity theft, my family is extremely concerned about our financial security. I'm sure there isn't any magic bullet that can keep thieves from stealing our information if they really want to, but I'm curious about the credit monitoring services you see advertised. They appear to help keep tabs on any unusual activity and alert you to suspicious uses of your credit information. Are these useful and worth the yearly fee? I know we can always request our credit reports, but we'd like something more proactive.

A clerk in the registration office of the Community College of Baltimore County's Catonsville campus has been charged in the identity thefts of students at the school, county police said yesterday. Joel M. Chambers, 19, of the first block of McGrady Square in Catonsville was charged Thursday with six counts of personal identity theft and four counts of possessing credit card numbers that did not belong to him. He was being held last night at the Baltimore County jail in lieu of $25,000 bail, authorities said.

A federal jury in Baltimore convicted Nancy Jean Siegel yesterday of murdering a Reisterstown man 30 years her senior after conning him out of everything he owned as part of a decades-long scheme that had dozens of victims, including her daughters and husbands. The verdict was returned after about seven hours of deliberations in U.S. District Court. The jury found Siegel guilty on 20 of 21 counts, including mail, wire and bank fraud; identity theft; and witness tampering by killing 75-year-old Jasper Frederick "Jack" Watkins in 1996 to keep her financial crimes from being discovered.

Today's investor might hold a morning mug of coffee up to a Morgan Stanley brokerage statement, which now contains a mark made by heat-sensitive ink, to double-check its authenticity. That same investor might use a secret, six-digit code that changes every minute when accessing an account online through E*Trade Financial Corp. The code can't be intercepted because it's generated by a key chain-sized device with an algorithm known only to the brokerage firm. It might sound like an episode of CSI: Wall Street -- if there were such a show -- but the security measures are the latest efforts by brokerage firms to combat an emerging area of identity theft.

A year ago, someone fraudulently applied for credit in my name. I was tipped off by several diligent credit card companies. I promptly placed fraud alerts with all three credit bureaus and notified the local police department and Social Security office. One less-than-diligent company, however, allowed the fraudster to open an account after I had done all these things. I followed the company's instructions, sending it a notarized affidavit of fraud. The account has disappeared from my credit reports, which I review regularly, but I'm getting calls from a collection agency about it. Is there anything else I should have done?

NEW YORK - Services that monitor your credit activity for signs of identity theft are about to start making sense. Right now, if you pay for a service to monitor your credit files, it will read information from just one of the three major credit bureaus - Equifax Inc., Experian or TransUnion. Starting in November, privacy-protection company Intersections Inc. expects to launch a credit-monitoring service that tracks loan activity from all three credit-reporting bureaus in an effort to stop identity theft.

NEW YORK - In a nightmare case for American consumers, federal investigators said yesterday that they uncovered the largest identity theft ring ever seen, one that victimized more than 30,000 people and led to millions of dollars in losses. The scheme allegedly involved a former employee at a Long Island software company who, with nothing more than a laptop computer and some passwords, worked with New York street criminals to steal credit and financial information of victims around the country.

When CitiFinancial, the Baltimore-based consumer-finance division of Citigroup Inc., put a box of computer tapes that documented the financial habits of its customers on a UPS truck in Weehawken, N.J., last month, the shipment represented one routine step in the nation's sprawling credit system. Thousands of companies regularly ship or electronically transfer personal information to three credit reporting agencies, and CitiFinancial's box was bound for a data processing center in Allen, Texas.

A Navy petty officer's charges of making fraudulent purchases and misusing a government computer are tied to an investigation into a Baltimore-area identify theft ring, Baltimore County police said yesterday. Curtis L. Phillips, 27, is charged with violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice in connection with the alleged theft of naval officers' identities, according to Navy spokesmen. Phillips, who has been with the Navy for four years, is from the Baltimore area, records show. The third class petty officer will face an Article 32 hearing - the military equivalent of a grand jury hearing - on Sept.