California Crime Ring Using ID Docs of Foreign Scholars to Defraud Financial Firms

ID thieves based in California’s San Fernando Valley and Glendale have been using the Social Security Numbers of foreign scholars who left the U.S. years ago to file hundreds of bank and credit-card applications, according to a cybercrime expert who spoke with the Los Angeles Times.

David Maimon, head of fraud insights at SentiLink and a criminology professor at Georgia State University, told the newspaper that the ring exploits identities that still linger across university databases and credit bureaus. Criminals “resurrect” those records to open accounts and max out credit while victims live abroad, he said.

The tactic emerged as Maimon and colleague Karl Lubenow probed waves of suspicious applications tied to clusters of Southern California addresses and IPs in September, after first noticing impersonations of foreign celebrities before uncovering a much larger pattern that included scores of former scholars dating as far back as 1977.

Most suspect applications originated from six apartment addresses in Van Nuys, North Hollywood, Toluca Lake, Glendale and Thai Town, Maimon said. The criminals involved in the scheme likely selected these apartments because they had access to mailboxes and could intercept credit cards, checks, and other documents, he told the Times.

He noted the nexus sits near Burbank and Glendale, home to Armenian Power, an organized crime group long linked to sophisticated financial fraud. Roughly half of the schemes targeted scholars from Turkey, Armenia’s historical rival, with the rest spanning Japan, India, the Netherlands, Portugal and Greece, according to the report.

Maimon told the news outlet that he has notified affected financial institutions through his role as a fraud investigator. One institution said it traced high-dollar transactions in L.A. and Kern counties to new accounts with Glendale-area addresses and minimal credit histories and continues to receive applications using ex-scholars’ identities.

Sgt. Frank Diana of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department Fraud and Cyber Crimes Bureau told the Times that criminal groups operating in the area are adept at identity theft, masking IPs and laundering their illicit proceeds. “They’re doing it to make millions of dollars, live in nice houses, all at the expense of taxpayers,” he said in the report.