identity theft

Just as we wrote about the pressing need for financial literacy among consumers as credit tightens, The New York Times reports on the government’s efforts to combat those “free” credit report firms, which charge people for a service they are entitled to get for free.
On television it’s hard to miss the wildly popular band of [...]

Just in time to throw another twist into the health reform debate, the Government Accountability Office reported today that Medicaid is paying to fill prescriptions for the dead.
After studying Medicaid claims in five states — California, New York, North Carolina, Illinois and Texas — GAO found more than 1,800 cases, between fiscal years 2006 and [...]

Remember Monday’s Supreme Court decision that logically pointed out that it doesn’t make sense to convict someone for “identity theft” if the worker using a fake social security number to get a job didn’t know that it actually belonged to someone?  He could be convicted of other things, as was Ignacio Flores-Figheroa, the subject of [...]

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled unanimously that to convict an individual for identity theft, the defendant must have known that he was using the identity of an existing person.
The case arose, at such cases usually do, in the context of an undocumented worker, Ignacio Flores-Figueroa, who submitted false documents to an employer to get [...]