Southern California Man Gets 11 Years For Using Stolen I.D.s To Hijack Unwitting Homeowners' HELOC Accounts; Ripoff Netted $1M+

From the Office of the U.S. Attorney (Los Angeles):

• An Orange County man has been sentenced to 132 months in federal prison for orchestrating two identity theft schemes in which he obtained personal information from hundreds of consumers and used the data in an attempt to fraudulently obtain approximately $1.5 million from home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) and credit cards accounts. Martin Quoc Pham, 28, of Garden Grove, was sentenced [...] by United States District Judge George H. Wu. In addition to imposing the 11-year prison term, Judge Wu ordered Pham to pay $537,973.

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• In the [HELOC] scheme, Pham and his associates used personal identifying information to take over HELOCs at JPMorgan Chase Bank. Once they had online access to the HELOCs, Pham and his co-conspirators transferred money into bank accounts they controlled. This scheme, which lasted only five months but netted well over $1 million, caused losses to the bank and to individual victims whose identities were taken over.(1)

For the U.S. Attorney press release, see Orange County Man Sentenced To 11 Years In Prison For Two Identity Theft Schemes Involving Lines Of Credit.

(1) In the second scheme, Pham and his co-conspirators used personal identifying information to encode counterfeit credit cards that were used to obtain merchandise and gift cards at WalMart stores and Sam's Clubs across Southern California.