Identity theft charges are serious and require the careful consideration of a defense to the charges.
A Georgia man was recently arrested by the FBI and charged with identity theft. The man was arrested in a neighboring community on what a supervisory special agent with the FBI described as a "large number" of charges, noting that the full extent of the charges was not yet known. The FBI has been conducting the criminal investigation for over a month. The arrest was linked to a recent announcement by a global credit card and payments processing company that personal data for 5,247 current and former employees had been stolen.
The company stated that an employee of a third-party administrator that administers the company's health care plan emailed the data to a personal email account. The staffer, no longer with the third-party administrator, emailed names, addresses, birth dates and Social Security numbers of current and former employees to the personal email account. The data of at least 1,000 former employees, and 11 family members, was compromised. The information can be used to take out phony credit cards or file bogus tax returns.
Identity theft refers to a group of crimes in which someone wrongfully obtains and uses another individual's personal information. It is a crime to misuse another individual's personal or financial identifying information. For those facing identity theft charges, a possible criminal conviction and serious penalties, it is important to consider a criminal defense.
An experienced criminal attorney can help an accused party develop a criminal defense strategy in response to identity theft, or other, charges that the party is facing. A strong advocate for the interests of the accused may be able to secure a reduction or elimination of charges.