| Woman Who Bought House Using Stranger's Name Gets 5 Years for ID Theft
The woman who took a stranger's driver's license and used it to buy a $419,000 townhouse in Fairfax County last year was sentenced to five years in prison yesterday. The scheme unraveled for Elizabeth Cabrera-Rivera, 40, not when she obtained two mortgages for the house in the stranger's name, or when she deeded the house to herself. It was when she refinanced her second mortgage, and the bank sent an overpayment check to the stranger, that Cabrera-Rivera was caught. She was arrested at the BB&T bank in Arlington County that figured out her scheme. .
Cyber-crime 'worse than burglary'
Identity theft has become one of the most feared crimes in the UK, according to a study of more than 1,400 regular internet users, outranking burglary, assault and robbery. Around one in three respondents to the survey indicated that they had been the victim of some form of cyber-theft, including phishing emails, credit card fraud and unauthorised bank transfers. The research, commissioned by internet security software maker AVG, revealed that individual financial loss ranged from a few pounds to several thousand pounds. Some 90 per cent of respondents had threat protection software installed on their PCs, but a third remained unconvinced that these were adequate measures to protect them from cyber-crime. Liverpool topped the list of UK cities most afraid of cyber-theft with 93 per cent highlighting their concern.
Brown faces Commons with 'profound' regret
GORDON Brown has "profoundly" apologised for the loss of personal details of almost half the population as it transpired that teenagers could be left vulnerable to identity theft for years. The Prime Minister said he regretted the "inconvenience" that has left 25 million people exposed to potential fraud after an HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) official copied the sensitive details to computer discs which were then lost in transit. .
Co-operation forged over eight years is brought crashing down
I want to take this to a new level. I want to use the Scottish Government and the position of first minister to make more of an impact overseas, especially in America." Mr Salmond will end his two-day visit to New York with a speech to the Council for Foreign Relations. But there was confusion about whether his speech would be publicised, after the council closed the meeting to media. Mr Salmond yesterday visited the New York Stock Exchange, which hit a record high while he was there. Also yesterday, Mr Salmond held two private meetings with potential investors, understood to be a financial management group and a biotech firm, thought to be on the verge of investing significant sums in Scotland. First Minister's gambits keep London playing defensively 1 Tony Blair apparently willing to let Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, serve out sentence in Libya, rather than Scotland.
Clinton Rallies, Counterattacks At Debate
After two bad weeks in the 2008 Democratic presidential campaign, she recovered her footing and pushed back sharply at her opponents in a debate Thursday night." Obama "had only an average night, and on a couple of questions he seemed flummoxed." And Edwards "should have stayed home." In a Newsweek online exclusive, Howard Fineman says, "Hillary Clinton said she was wearing her 'asbestos pants suit' in Las Vegas, but, more important, she was wearing a smile and carrying a fistful of ammo and sound bytes. It was time to drop her rising challenger, Barack Obama, and she did it with the grin and grace of a Park Avenue gun moll." Time today rates the candidates, and gives Clinton the highest marks of the contenders. In his column in The Politico, Roger Simon writes, "The (rhymes with rich) is back," noting that Clinton "gave as good as she got.
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