Guilty Plea - $1.5 Million from Identity Theft
Sometimes, crime really does pay. An Atlanta man has pled guilty to stealing over 1.5 million through identity theft. His punishment is getting a lot of attention.
Light Sentence?
An Atlanta man has pled guilty to trying to become 225 people on paper so he could loot their bank account, buy on their credit and ruin their finances. Despite doing 1.5 million in damage, his sentence has been declared to be only three and half years in prison. With good time, he could do less than three years. For 1.5 MILLION dollars.
U.S. District Judge Richard Story on Tuesday sentenced Serp Yaman, who had pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft in an international scheme to steal social security numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers and assorted personal identifying information. United States Attorney David Nahmias credited the Atlanta police department and the multi-agency identify theft financial crimes task force for going the extra mile in "collaring an international identify thief" before he could use all the information he stole.
"We particularly commend the Atlanta Police Department and some very perceptive officers whose examination of a single computer in a small apartment in Atlanta led the way to uncovering a multi-national scam," Nahmias said in a press release.
While there is no parole in the federal system, inmates can get 15 percent off their sentences for good behavior. The U.S. Attorney office said it couldn't track the credit limits on all of the credit cards because they were issued by foreign banks, but it said that Yaman had assumed the identities of a number of the 225 persons whose information he stole. Some of the victims saw that they were being improperly charged and tracked the fraud to Yaman's Atlanta address and contacted Atlanta cops, the U.S.. Attorney said.
The police searched the apartment and its computer and then worked with the United States Secret Service and the U.S. Postal Inspectors, who investigated the international case.