Crime doesn't pay! Marten Casarez is a 22-year-old man from Mansfield that got involved in identity theft. But he was no small crook, he took the identities of more than 1.00 men and women from 33 states, as the Star-Telegram informs. As you might have imagined, the Police nabbed the guy and he's facing lots of years in jail, after gaining a profit of more than $334.000 from his evil schemes.

It might seem that 20 years is too much, if you consider that this guy "only" stole identities, but things are far worse than they actually seem, since as witnesses pointed out, this guy, despite his young age, ruined both their bank accounts and their lives. The most dangerous aspect is that people usually consider this type of crime as something which is not really that bad; well, it actually IS. It can have serious consequences. Stealing is stealing, no matter how swift a criminal is - this guy didn't steal IDs just for fun - he obtained illegitimate profits while other people strived hard to earn that money; he just came and stole it all.

As seen in the same online paper I already mentioned, a Dallas woman spent months recovering her credit after Casarez used her (stolen) mail to set up a FedEx account in her name and used credit cards to pay for different stuff. He also set up a $240.00 line of credit using a woman's name.

Out of the 9 charges he pleaded guilty for, 5 had been dropped, but this guy is really in for it. He's definitely not going to escape unpunished as judges are not looking lightly on cyber-crime. Perhaps if he gets a huge sentence others will be discouraged to commit similar crimes - this strategy has worked before with other types of crimes…