If a fitness center moves to another location, they contract with a company to pack up and move the equipment and furniture, and to clean out the building. If the movers drop and break a piece of equipment, they’re responsible for the loss.

But what if, when the movers clean out the offices, they find cabinets full of the gym members’ personal and financial information? What if the movers just toss those files in the dumpster out back with the other trash? Who’s responsible to the members?

The Texas Attorney General’s office says it’s the fitness center, and has charged Cornerstone Fitness of Edinburg with violation of the Identity Theft Enforcement and Protection Act for failing to adequately store and safeguard the members’ records.

It’s a set of circumstances that’s becoming more common as companies go out of business or move to less expensive space while they try to ride out the recession. What happens to all the records they maintained? In the case of Cornerstone, those records included names, addresses, dates of birth, places of employment, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, medical information and bank and credit card account numbers.

At a time when everybody’s looking for ways to trim their expenses, maybe it’s a good idea to cancel the gym memberships, but sign up for identity theft protection with LifeLock, the industry leader in identity theft protections services.

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We’re all experiencing anxiety (or outright panic) in the face of diminishing job security, escalating interest rates and sinking home values. I hate to add to the daily financial sturm und drang—and I beg your forgiveness—but you need to know about the increasing risk of identity theft related to data breaches and this recession.

The threat comes from those who are unemployed and desperate; those who are bitter about imminent layoff or job loss; and a shrinking workforce that can’t maintain security as they perform work with fewer resources. In fact, there were 47% more data breaches in 2008 than in 2007.

If there’s a silver lining to be found in our ailing economy, it’s the abundance of sales and discounts currently available to consumers. Home sellers, car dealers, restaurants and retailers are all trying to lure nervous customers to their goods with ever deepening savings. Of course, some of us have always been reluctant to pay full price for any products or services. Canny consumers pride themselves on their parsimony and insider information on where to find the best deals.

If you count yourself among this elite, penny-wise club, or want to, you should know about LifeLock’s identity theft service and their promotional codes for discounted services. LifeLock is the ID theft service chosen by nearly 1.5 million Americans because of their comprehensive and innovative strategies. And, the fact that 93% of their members choose to renew after their initial enrollment is a testament to LifeLock’s customer service.

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If you’re considering identity theft services, visit LifeLock.com to learn more about their strategies. Use the Life Lock promotion code “Defense”to get the lowest available price. LifeLock provides identity theft services to more than 1 million Americans. Read on to find out why you would benefit from it, too.

Employers know a lot more about you than you know about them. Anyone with access to your human resources file has your name, address, phone number, date of birth, Social Security number, place of birth, credit history, work history, salary history and physical description.

But who are these people who hold all that information about you? If you’re unfortunate enough to be an employee of the Library of Congress, one of those people was William Sinclair.

Sinclair, a former personnel executive, was charged by information this week for using the library’s payroll records to steal at least 10 employees’ identities. He then passed the employee information to Labiska Gibbs, his cousin, who used it to obtain credit cards.

And then the cousins went shopping. The two charged more than $38,000 to the newly minted credit cards, according to court documents.

Sinclair could receive up to 20 years in prison if he’s convicted. Gibbs is looking at as much as 37 years behind bars because she was the one who actually obtained the fraudulent credit cards.

Your personal information lives a life of its own in hundreds of databases. Schools, employers, creditors, health-care providers, hospitals, marketers, cities, counties, states, nations—they all have your information. Don’t you ever wonder what they do with it, who has access to it or how they safeguard it?

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A man was arrested just outside Harrisburg, Penn., and charged with forging his wife’s signature on loan applications and insurance papers so he could buy six cars with a total value of more than $183,000, according to an announcement by Attorney General Tom Corbett.

Everett Frank was already imprisoned at the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution at Camp Hill when agents from the Attorney General’s Insurance Fraud Section arrested him on the car-buying charges.

He was also already estranged from his wife, Michelle Frank. Neither situation is expected to see much improvement in the near future.

Frank didn’t have the credit to buy the cars on his own, so he allegedly persuaded the dealership to let him take the paperwork home so his wife could sign them. He then returned with Michelle Frank’s forged signature on the loan applications, falsified insurance documents and also gave them a copy of her driver’s license without her knowledge.

In addition to the charges that first landed Frank in prison, he now faces six counts of ID theft, 12 counts of forgery, six counts of insurance fraud (providing false, incomplete or misleading information), six more counts of insurance fraud (presenting false information to a government agency) and one count of theft by deception.

If convicted on all 31 charges, Frank could face up to 127 years of prison and $105,000 in fines.

LifeLock currently serves nearly 1.5 million Americans, and helps protect them from identity theft, and could have helped Everett Frank’s victims, too. Visit their website at LifeLock.com. Enroll using the Life Lock promotional code Defense to receive 30 days of free protection and the lowest available price.

At the end of the 30-day free period, your card will be automatically billed $9 monthly unless you cancel within that first 30-day period. You can cancel anytime without penalty by calling 1-800-LIFELOCK. This offer is for new LifeLock members only.

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You accidentally dial the wrong number, calling an old boyfriend by mistake. You compose an e-mail complaining about your boss, and somehow send it to your boss instead of a sympathetic coworker.

No, it’s never pretty when these things happen, and, when we make mistakes like this we usually feel like idiots. Fortunately, there’s always someone just a little bit dumber to make us all feel just a little bit better about our own mistakes. Meet Peter Pardo.

Peter Pardo needed to find a guy who could help him out. So he text messaged a friend, asking if he knew anyone who could “make cards,” that is, make 150 fraudulent credit cards from the information Pardo got from all the mail he’d stolen in the Seattle area.

Poor Peter Pardo made the same mistake the rest of us have made, except he sent his text message to a detective in the Kent Police Department who had dealt with Pardo in the past.

The detective—who no doubt felt like it was an early Christmas—played along and texted back: “I know a guy I trust. Text him and tell him what u got.”

Pardo set up the meeting with the trusted friend, made the deal and was promptly busted. Police found “a massive amount” of stolen mail, a bunch of stolen credit cards and more “washed” checks.

So far, Pardo has been charged with one count of financial fraud and three counts of second-degree identity theft. Prosecutors are still trying to contact all the people whose mail, credit cards and checks were stolen, and expect to press additional charges.

LifeLock can’t do much to keep you from making dumb mistakes with your e-mail, but they can help protect you from identity theft resulting from stolen mail, credit cards and checks. Visit LifeLock.com to learn more. Use the LifeLock promotion code Defense to get the best price and 30 free days of identity theft protection.

At the end of the 30-day free period, your card will be automatically billed $9 monthly unless you cancel within that first 30-day period. You can cancel anytime without penalty by calling 1-800-LIFELOCK. This offer is for new LifeLock members only.

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If you read a lot of identity theft stories, they might all start to sound the same. But every once in a while you run across one with a refreshingly different twist. It’s the “stupid criminal” element that sets this one apart.

Johnny Opara, of St. Paul, Minn., has been charged with seven felony tax crimes and one case of identity theft, according to the Minnesota Department of Revenue.

Some of Opara’s victims say they hired him to prepare their taxes, but he never filed them. In other cases, Opara, 55, allegedly filed taxes for people who hadn’t hired him and knew nothing about his activities.

In 2004 Opara received a $1,100 tax return he wasn’t entitled to after filing a fraudulent property rent tax credit return. He’d filed for other returns, as well, but they were blocked before he received them.

Opara admitted that he had, in fact, filed a return in 2005 for a woman he didn’t know, and listed on the return dependents she didn’t have.

And now the stupid criminal element:
Opara’s defense? He told investigators that he had had a stroke and was just “practicing” filing the tax returns. He said he never meant to send them, but that some “got sent” and he couldn’t cancel them.

If convicted of all charges, Opara could face up to 55 years in prison and $80,000 in fines.

Nearly 1.5 million Americans have already enrolled in LifeLock’s comprehensive identity theft services to safeguard their finances. Visit LifeLock.com to learn more about the innovative tools and strategies that make LifeLock an industry leader.

Enroll using LifeLock discount code Defense for the lowest available price.

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Express Scripts has gone public today with information that they were contacted early in October by extortionists who threatened to disclose personal and medical information on millions of the company’s customers if Express Scripts doesn’t meet their ransom demands.

The ransom request was sent by mail and accompanied by the names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and, in some cases, prescription details, of 75 of the firm’s 50 million customers.

George Paz, Express Scripts’ chief executive, said the company will not pay the ransom, but declined to say how much money the extortionists demanded.

Express Scripts is one the largest pharmacy benefit management companies, and handles approximately 500 million prescriptions a year.

A company spokesman said they contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigations when the received the ransom demand last month, but still don’t know how the stolen information was obtained.

What makes this situation unique is Express Scripts’ unwillingness to pay up, according to Alan Paller, director of research for the SANS Institute, a computer security training group.

“There are thousands of companies that have already paid off extortionists in return for not having their customers’ data exposed,” Paller said. “This is especially true in the financial industry, as some banks are now getting more than one new extortion demand a day.”

Paller said few cases like Express Scripts’, involving cyber and data extortion, become public because their victims usually prefer to pay the ransom and avoid the publicity.

LifeLock is an industry leader in identity theft services, with almost 1.5 million members in the United States. Visit their website at LifeLock.com and see how they can help protect your finances, credit standing and your good name.

Sign up for their innovative services using the Life Lock Promotion Code Defense and get the lowest price with 30 days of free identity theft protection.

At the end of the 30-day free period, your card will be automatically billed $9 monthly unless you cancel within that first 30-day period. You can cancel anytime without penalty by calling 1-800-LIFELOCK. This offer is for new LifeLock members only.

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A Denver grand jury indicted five defendants last week in an identity theft crime ring. Shadwick Weaver, the ringleader, is in custody and being held on $500,000 bond. Weaver has been indicted on 65 counts. Three of the others indicted by the grand jury are also in custody; a fifth defendant is at large.

During a joint investigation by the economic crimes units of the Aurora Police Department and the Denver District Attorney’s office, detectives discovered almost 300 fraudulent IDs, employee IDs, and counterfeit checks and credit cards.

They also discovered dozens of victims that include merchants and individuals who lost thousands of dollars. The crime ring targeted grocery stores, hotels and liquor stores and used what they called “temporary credit cards”—cards the thieves made that had no magnetic strips. When clerks asked about the unusual cards, Weaver and the others explained they had been issued temporary cards and would then manually enter stolen credit card numbers on the merchants’ credit card keypads.

Investigators have linked the defendants to methamphetamine trafficking, which they believe was funded by the identity thefts. Financial and personal information was obtained by breaking into cars and burglarizing homes and businesses.

Charges against the five include theft, identity theft, forgery and conspiracy to commit theft, conspiracy to commit identity theft, conspiracy to commit forgery and conspiracy to commit computer crime.

LifeLock provides comprehensive identity theft services. Visit their website at LifeLock.com to see why nearly 1.5 million members have chosen LifeLock to protect their identities. Enroll in their award-winning services using LifeLock promo code Defense for the lowest possible price.

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