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Now They're Coming Out of the Woodwork to Confess

Posted on May 15, 2007 by Michelle Pastor

Here’s another account from an identity thief on how he did it.  James Jackson is in prison now, but he claims to have stolen the identities of such celebrities as Danny De Vito, Mel Gibson and a federal judge.  I don’t know how he was caught, but what he confesses to is interesting and something we can all learn from. 

He would often get his victims’ names from the newspaper or over the police scanner (complete with a license number).  He would choose names that were uncommon because common last names made it difficult to pinpoint the victim’s information.

James would take information from mailboxes and he said that all he needed was a name and a birth date.  From there he would “pretext” the rest of the victim’s information (social security number and account numbers) by calling around to insurance companies, retail stores, mortgage companies or government agencies and convincing the person that he had forgotten his account numbers, etc..

A piece of advice that he gave is to call your college and ask that your personal identifiers be blackened from your records when they send a transcript.

Watch the newsclip video with the interview