Another One Bites The Dust

According to several sources, such as the ID Theft Secrets Blog, "the number of Americans who've needlessly had their personal information exposed to identity theft is now over 93 million." That's about a third of all Americans! ID theft is an Internet-wide problem, and sadly, a few of the perpetrators also operate on eBay. Well, the only place one of them will be operating in is a prison cell, and for a long time too. Once again, eBay's Fraud Investigations Team (the same folks with the long arm) have helped put away one of the "bad guys" on eBay.

For a few weeks, the eBay/PayPal Fraud Investigation Team (FIT) had been tracking the activities of a person who was using stolen credit cards or identities to create PayPal accounts. I've mentioned in an earlier blog post that the FIT works closely with law enforcement agencies around the world to tackle fraud online. In this particular case, the team alerted relevant agencies, like the Dallas Department of Justice, the DEA, and the Department of Public Safety to discuss the case in detail.

As part of the investigation, one of our fraud investigators testified about before a Grand Jury which, minutes later, came back with an indictment of identity theft and wire fraud against the perpetrator – Robert Arbuckle. The Grand Jury's indictment included Wire Fraud for transmitting funds from the US to Russia (10 years) and 27 counts of identify theft at 2 years each (54 years) for a total of 64 years. On August 11th, Robert Arbuckle was arrested.

Keep an eye on eBay's Police Blotter for more information about the Fraud Investigation team's success.