New York Hacker Hits Pay Dirt

A high school dropout who was working part-time as a busboy in a New York City restaurant has been charged by federal investigators in one of the biggest identity fraud schemes ever uncovered. 32-year old Abraham Abdallah is believed to have pulled the targets of his scheme directly from last fall's Forbes '400 Richest' article. A copy of that article was found on the suspect at the time of his arrest, along with some notations of social security numbers and other personal identification numbers of some of the victims. Among the individuals whose identity Abdallah successfully cloned are Ted Turner, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart, Ross Perot, and Warren Buffett, just to name a few.

The Big Apple Hacker used a Brooklyn branch of the New York public library as one of his ports of entry into the financial records and fortunes of the Forbes 400. Abdallah gained access to sensitive credit information about his individuals by duping various credit reporting services, such as Equifax, into giving him the information. After gaining account numbers and other identification information for his targets, he would access accounts at brokerage houses such as Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch.

Authorities were first alerted to the scheme when Merrill Lynch received a suspicious e-mail request to transfer $10 million from an account of Thomas Siebel, founder of Siebel systems. Siebel claimed he had never made the request and Merrill Lynch promptly contacted police. Police arrested Abdallah last month after detectives posing as couriers delivered over $25,000 in special-ordered credit card manufacturing equipment to his home.