A man who formerly worked for a car dealership in Plantation, FL, has pleaded guilty to mail fraud conspiracy. The 26 year old, Dayton Diaz, admitted to selling personal information of approximately 75 dealership customers for $9,000. The customers’ information sold included names, addresses and social security numbers.

The purchaser, 30 year old Fitzroy Carter, used the information he bought from Diaz to buy more than $100,000 worth of computers. Carter will go on trial in March for his crime.

The computers that were bought were shipped to the homes of the victims, however, identity theft criminals who were involved knew the scheduled delivery times and dates and would intercept the deliveries using fake drivers licenses.

Diaz will probably be sentenced to up to 3 years in jail for selling the information. His attorney, Jared Bossola, has stated that Diaz is remorseful and has cooperated with officials in the investigation.

“My client regrets this whole situation and regrets his relationship with those individuals who thrive off identity theft,” Bossola said. “He basically succumbed to peer pressure.”

With identity theft taking place at an alarming rate, it is imperative to be careful in protecting your personal information from being copied. In cases like this one, where the customer had to provide personal information, but it was misused, there is nothing that the victims could have done to prevent their information from being stolen. However, they can still act to protect their credit by placing fraud alerts on their credit files with all major credit bureaus and by checking their credit reports for any suspicious activity.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 8:34 am and is filed under Articles Concerning Identity Theft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.