Assignment #1: News Reports

Mallory Phillips

September 1, 2009

News Report #1

“Florida Man to Plead Guilty to Credit-Card Data Theft”

Jason Kessler, CNN.com

8/28/09

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/08/28/US.hacker.plea.agreement/index.html?iref=newssearch&eref=rss_tech

Albert Gonzalez, of Miami, Florida, has been indicted in the largest case of identity theft in U.S. history. Not only was he stealing people’s identity, he has also been charged with 19 counts of credit card fraud. Gonzalez has agreed to serve 15-25 years for stealing data from more than 40 million credit cards. This sentence does not include the aforementioned identity theft charges. He must formally plead guilty by September 11 in order to the plea agreement to be good. The plea agreement states that he will serve 15-25 years (not including other charges), give up 1.65 million dollars in cash, three Rolex watches, and a Tiffany diamond ring. He is currently in a New York jail awaiting trial for the other hacking schemes that targeted the restaurant chain Dave & Busters.

I find it hard to believe that this man can get credit card information from 40 million people, and is just now being punished. It seems like they would have put a stop to it before it got that out of hand. People say its not safe to carry cash anymore these days because it can easily be stolen, but this shows you just how easy it is for someone to steal credit card information. I just had my bank call me yesterday to verify some purchase that I have made to ensure that my card information hadn’t been stolen. What a coincidence that I read this article a few days ago, and then I get that type of phone call. It just goes to show you that no matter what you do with your money, someone is always going to be able to get their hands on it.