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New identity theft task force nets nearly four dozen
| Friday, Oct 6 2006 6:15 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Oct 6 2006 6:15 PM
A newly formed identity theft task force in Orange County has resulted in the arrest of nearly four dozen suspects, federal officials said Friday.
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The task force, which was formed last year, completed investigations into 14 different cases that authorities said are now being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Santa Ana.
The task force contains agents from the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Social Security Administration, the FBI, the Federal Trade Commission, the IRS and U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement, said Thom Mrozek, a U.S. attorney spokesman.
The cases announced Friday include an investigation dubbed "Operation Paper or Plastic," which led to the indictment on Aug. 30 of 20 individuals who are accused of causing losses of $1 million in a four-year period.
The alleged scam involved stealing credit cards and tax returns from the mail, then using them to create fake ID cards that in turn were used to make purchases and cash tax refund checks.
According to the indictment, a group of postal employees at the center of the scheme work out of the U.S. Postal Service Processing and Distribution Center in the city of Industry in Los Angeles County. Their names are unknown, according to the indictment.
At the news conference, U.S. Attorney Debra Wong Yang said investigators are working to identify the postal workers.
"All I'll tell you is that we know it's part of the big scheme," Yang told reporters. "That checks were stolen by postal employees and then were sold to the individuals."
Yang also announced the investigation of several "skimming" rings, in which waiters collected encoded information from credit cards that customers used to pay their bill.
Yang said the machines used to do such skimming are now as small as an iPod and can be hidden in a waiter's pocket.
"We're not just trying to go after the one-time person," she said. "We're trying to go against the rings of people who do this."