You may be vigilant about protecting your personal information from criminals by shredding all your bills and statements and otherwise guarding your private information but you still might be unable to stop someone from still getting a hold of your information. The criminals are finding “inside men” to pass them all the juicy details on people they want to target for identity theft. In this case a Social Security Administration employee was allegedly on “the take” and cooperating with the criminals.

Jennifer Batiste allegedly passed the stolen data to Craig Harris in exchange for $20 per query. Harris used the data to commit identity fraud, and made $2.5 million in fraudulent credit card charges.

Batiste has been charged with conspiracy, accessing a protected computer to conduct fraud, and disclosure of a Social Security number (SSN). If she is convicted on all charges, she could be sentenced to as many as 15 years in prison.

Harris pleaded guilty last fall to charges of conspiracy and unlawful possession of a means of identification. When he is sentenced in July, he can get up to 10 years in prison.

What are we supposed to do when the people we’re supposed to trust, can’t be trusted?

[Social Security Administration Worker Charged In Identity Theft Scheme]

[tags]SSN, SSA, Social Security Administration, Identity Theft, fraud, credit card fraud, credit cards, privacy, government[/tags]