This is HUGE!


Last Updated: 12:30 pm | Friday, March 3, 2006
ID theft suspects named
BY DAN HORN | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER
A local ring of ID thieves used a Hamilton County government web site to access Social Security numbers and other data that helped them steal nearly $500,000, federal authorities say.

The ring included six women and one man from the Cincinnati area and a Columbus woman, authorities say.

Traci Southerland, 37, of Cincinnati, was the ring leader, authorities say. The others charged are Muriel Murdock, 30, of Cincinnati; Frances Roberson, 40, of Cincinnati; Lashanta Hartman, 27, of Columbus; Heather Klette, of Ross, Ohio; William Kelly, 40, of Cincinnati; Shoronda Washington, of Cincinnati, and Danielle Brock, of Cincinnati.

Authorities still are looking for Klette. The rest have been arrested.

Federal prosecutors say the thefts occurred between 2001 and 2005. Most of the personal data involved in the case was posted on the clerk of courts Web site along with millions of other public records.

County officials learned of the thefts more than a year ago during an investigation by Blue Ash police, who turned over the case to federal prosecutors.

Court officials and judges formed a committee last year to review the county?s policy on posting public records and decided to strip the Web site of any records containing Social Security numbers.

?This occurred over a year ago, before we were able to put in place the protections we have now,? said Greg Hartmann, the clerk of courts.

More than a million documents, mostly traffic tickets and domestic relations records, have been removed from the site in the past year.
Hartmann said the site still contains about 6 million records.

The records that were removed still are available under Ohio?s public records laws at the courthouse.

The suspects are accused of seeking out victims who were similar in age and appearance to them, making it easier to get fraudulent driver?s licenses, checking accounts and other documents.

Members of the ring used those documents to cash checks and buy products from stores, banks and other institutions in at least six states, including Ohio, the indictment states.

Federal prosecutors say the suspects didn?t rely exclusively on the county?s site: They also obtained personal information by stealing mail and conducting Internet searches of other sites.

?They had other, more traditional, methods of getting information,? said Fred Alverson, spokesman for U.S. Attorney Greg Lockhart.

A federal grand jury in Cincinnati issued an indictment Feb. 15. The government did not disclose the indictment until Thursday to give authorities time to locate suspects, Alverson said.

The case is unrelated to the Enquirer's disclosure this week that records searches turned up Social Security number on Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell?s Web site

Good to see people like this get busted! [img]graemlins/thumbs_up.gif[/img]