by Keith Lubsen

Chris Hansen, correspondent for NBC News “Dateline NBC” next spoke about the televised report “To Catch an ID Thief” and how it took his team at NBC roughly $400,000 and one year to produce.

Chris Hansen NBC

Chris focused on a scam that involved US citizens receiving merchandise purchased with fraudulently obtained credit cards. The merchandise was purchased and shipped from the merchant to middlemen in the US who then take the same merchandise and ship it overseas. The crooks ship merchandise to a US address initially to avoid alerting the merchants to fraud due to foreign shipping addresses.

Chris’s team set up CH Delivery, a fake shipping company and began delivering some of the packages to one of the middlemen named Jeff Ball.

Chris began an ongoing conversation with Jeff and found that this middleman like many of the individuals in the US who are receiving and reshipping merchandise oversees are often victims themselves.

Jeff had met a woman named Wendy online who asked him to help her with her electronics business by taking delivery of items and reshipping them to Africa. Wendy sent sexy photos of herself along with electronic correspondence and Jeff took the bait. Ultimately, he paid for about $40,000 of the shipping charges out of his own pocket.

Jeff got caught up in an international identity theft crime ring and would have continued unknowingly aiding criminals unless Chris and his team exposed Jeff to the truth.

There was no Wendy and Jeff was out all of the money he had spent.

Chris and his team proceeded to travel to Switzerland to meet Wendy’s representative and confront him. The representative eventually broke when Chris confronted him and admitted to lying.

Chris’ body of work demonstrates how a broad range of crimes are related to identity theft. 

You can see more of the work Chris and his team at NBC produce online at The Hansen Files.

Thank you to the Utah AG’s office: Mark Shurtleff, Scott Morrill, Rich Hamp, John Kimball and everyone else at the Utah Office of The Attorney General for their tireless and outstanding work in the fight against identity theft.  The 2008 Economic Crime Conference was both educational and inspirational.