Prison term for identity thief

Woman found guilty of multiple frauds and forgeries committed by using identities of other people

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On Thursday the Helsinki District Court sentenced a 43-year-old woman to a year and three months' imprisonment on charges of identity theft.
      The convicted individual has committed several crimes in the name of other people.
      The woman from Helsinki was found guilty on 19 counts of fraud, 15 of forgery, one theft, and one attempted fraud.
      The woman had used the identities of three other women. In police questioning she admitted that she had bought the stolen identities on a street corner commonly known as Kurvi in Helsinki’s Sörnäinen district. The woman used either money or amphetamine to pay for the purchases.
     
Using the stolen identity documents, the woman started committing frauds and other crimes in the summer of 2008.
      She signed up for mobile phone connections with various operators and received mobile handsets and laptop computers bundled with the deals.
      She also took out loans from pawnbrokers in the name of her victims, using for example musical instruments and jewellery as security. She occasionally even wore a wig in order to fool sales staff as to her identity.
      Furthermore the woman pretended to be offering for rent an apartment that in reality was not hers to let.
      While doing so she used the names of her identity-theft victims. The woman managed to swindle almost EUR 5,000 in all as security deposits and advance payments from four would-be tenants
      She even rented DVD movies by using false IDs. She never returned the films.
     
The real owners of the stolen identity cards met with a considerable amount of trouble and worry when the mobile phone operators, collection agencies, and the would-be renters of the apartment approached them, loudly demanding what they were owed.
      In one instance, reported by Helsingin Sanomat in a feature article on one of the victims last month, a message was stuck on the victim's front door reporting that her mobile phone had been left inadvertently at a gas station and handed in to police. The fact that the victim was actually speaking on her mobile phone when she found this message started alarm bells ringing, and the police finally got on the woman’s trail after the rental scams - the phone had been mislaid during a meeting with one would-be tenant.
     
By that time the fraudster had already managed to pose as the other three women for almost a year.
      In the District Court, the woman pleaded guilty to almost all of the charges.
      The court ordered her to pay more than EUR 11,300 in damages.
      The woman is already serving prison time on unrelated previous offences.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Working group considers legislation on identity protection (22.2.2010)

Helsingin Sanomat