14 DAY TRIAL // According to the UK Metropolitan Police, a number of six men were sentenced to prison on June 8 after investigators demonstrated that they were in the business of selling fake identities. They were also accused of running online forums on which they taught others how to commit fraud.
The suspects, Jason Place, Mark Powell-Richards, Allen Stinger, Jaipal Singh, and Arun Thear, aged between 22 and 68, have pleaded guilty to their crimes. Another individual, Barry Sales, has not been prosecuted because he has a terminal illness.
Sales and Place, considered to be the masterminds of the operation, ran the company called Confidential Access from Alicante, Spain.
The interesting thing about this story is the fact that the fraudsters had been selling fake IDs, utility bills, and fake bank statements for years, claiming that all the documents were “novelty items” designed to “impress” the buyer’s friends.
Their other products included full credit profiles, credit history printouts, and everything else one would need to defraud companies.
For instance, one of their offers, called Platinum Profile, contained information on how to become an identity thief. While Platinum customers had to pay £5,500 (6,800 EUR or $8,500), 100% Creditmaster customers had to contribute with less than half that amount if they wanted a complete lesson on how to commit fraud.
However, not all services came at a price. The con artists also ran free discussion forums, and ones in which subscribers would only have to pay a monthly fee in exchange for access to the vast quantity of fraud-related tips and advice.
Authorities are now working on identifying their 11,000 customers, some of which have spent over £20,000 (25,000 EUR or $30,000) on the false documents. Apparently, for some of them it paid off, since they managed to cause damages of over 1 million pounds (1.25 million EUR or $1.5 million).