In January, the woman who stole Michelle McCambridge’s identify asked to open a credit account — while standing at McCambridge’s J.C. Penney counter.
McCambridge quickly made an excuse to walk away, where she secretly got store security to train their cameras on the woman.
And in those few minutes, the 23-year-old retail clerk and college student set in motion a federal investigation that has brought down what authorities say is a prolific ring of ID thieves responsible for victimizing at least 39 people.
Now five Seattle-area people, including a mother and daughter, have been indicted in U.S. District Court in Seattle with a litany of fraud charges. Three of them have already pleaded guilty and are facing prison sentences.
“Out of how many customer-service desks, out of how many registers she could have gone to, and she had to come to me?” McCambridge wondered this week.
“It was fate.”
SOURCE: Seattle Times
Posted on September 9th, 2009 at 4:08 pm by Lin McNulty
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