Using a stranger's social security number is the newest, sexiest trend in shape-shifting a bad credit score into a good one. Kind of like in Mario Kart, when you run over the rainbow cube and get the ghost power that allows you to steal bananas unwittingly from your neighbor -- what, we said "kind of?" -- a borrowed SSN gives you a brand new lease on life. Or a house or a yacht.
But just as in Mario Kart, ghostly powers are only temporary, and ghastly deeds are often exposed. The consequences? Pissing off a real-life Princess Peach.
Enter Beth Phillips, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri. She announced that a California woman and a Florida man were indicted yesterday by a federal grand jury for allegedly engaging in credit fraud.
Karen Washam-Hawkins, 48, is accused of selling fake Social Security numbers to potential home buyers. Gerald William Bartlett, 38, allegedly concocted payment histories under the guise of his own business and supplied them to a credit bureau to establish shiny new track records. Prosecutors say those records were then used to fool the credit bureaus into establishing solid, albeit fake, credit histories for the buyers.
The beneficiaries of Washam-Hawkins' and Bartlett's scheme used their new credit to buy six homes in Lee's Summit, Phillips said, spending almost $3 million combined on their spanking new properties.
This indictment is the first of its kind in the nation; never before have the suppliers of fake SSNs been charged with credit history fraud, Phillips said in a press release. She called this type of fraud a growing trend: "It undermines our economy and poses a significant threat to financial institutions."
Bartlett faces up to 10 years in prison, and Washam-Hawkins, who is also charged with wire fraud, faces up to 20.
Comments (0)