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Carl
 
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Default Drug addicts and your identity. It's not just a meth.

Methamphetamine addicts are using the Internet to commit identity
theft, law-enforcement officials and medical experts in the USA and
Canada say.

Meth is a highly addictive, cheap alternative to cocaine and heroin.
Meth addicts - already adept at stealing personal information from
mailboxes to finance drug habits - now are hacking PCs to steal
information, says Bob Gauthier, a detective in the Edmonton, Alberta,
Police Service's meth project team.

In the USA, the problem is increasing "in complexity and size" in the
West and Midwest, says Robert Brown, agent-in-charge of the Colorado
Bureau of Investigation. He says meth addicts also are participating
in phishing e-mail scams and selling stolen goods on auction sites.
Many are employed by ID theft rings run by non-drug users, he says.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., has introduced a bill in the Senate
Judiciary Committee that asks the Justice Department to investigate a
link between ID theft and meth use. "The meth epidemic is creating a
wave of identity theft," she says. Among recent cases:

Authorities recommend that individuals review their credit report
regularly and contact the credit bureaus regarding suspicious or
unknown activity as soon as possible. To learn how to get copies of
your credit report, visit
http://monthlyincome.50megs.com/Make...ney/Page5.html

· In western Canada, a 21-year-old female meth addict was arrested
this month in possession of 3,357 stolen credit card numbers,
Gauthier says. The numbers came from a U.S. clothier's website in
October 2003, Gauthier says. It is unclear how much the woman spent
on the stolen cards, or how many she sold, he says.

· A man under investigation on suspicion of hacking into retail sites

and stealing credit card numbers was arrested by Sunnyvale, Calif.,
police last month and charged with forging government checks, says
James Sibley, head of the Santa Clara County District Attorney's high-
technology crime unit. The man also is suspected of buying and
selling credit card numbers and names on the Internet, Sibley says.

The paranoid, adrenaline-fueled culture of so-called speeders, and
the drug's effects make users likely candidates as ID thieves,
medical experts say. Meth addicts can stay up for days performing
menial tasks, such as testing the validity of credit card numbers on
websites and buying goods online.

"It's like an ant colony," says S. Alex Stalcup, medical director at
the New Leaf Treatment Center in Northern California. He has toured
several houses where tasks are divided among more than a dozen
people. "From floor to ceiling, there are stolen goods such as PCs,
digital cameras, household appliances and car parts," he says.

In a survey about the impact of meth use on local crime, more than a
quarter of 500 county sheriff departments said it had contributed to
a rise in ID theft, says the National Association of Counties, which
represents county governments.

That increase has forced local authorities to beef up operations.
Jefferson County (Colo.) District Attorney Scott Storey says the
county this year started an economic crime unit and a second grand
jury to handle such cases.

Visit http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/enoughmoney to learn more
about identity theft, credit fraud, and credit repair.

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