25 arrested in dollar-store ID theft ring

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A three-month investigation of the Governor’s Fraudulent ID Task Force, “Operation Dollar Store” targeted 14 dollar-stores across the Valley suspected of selling cell phones activated with false identities to people who claimed they had no legal identification.

Authorities believe some of the phones,… were used to facilitate organized crime operations. Similar phones are widely used by … fake id manufacturers,…

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It could be months before authorities determine which identities belonged to actual people.

“It’s impossible to tell, and that’s the frightening part,” Morrison said. “Some of these were real victims in the sense of identity theft and some were fraudulent names. It’s going to take a while to see who are the real victims.”

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OK I can see that selling cell phones activated with a fake ID is a big problem, untraceable phones are important to those involved in crime. But what I don’t get is the comment-

Authorities believe some of the phones,… were used to facilitate organized crime operations. Similar phones are widely used by … fake id manufacturers…

Since when are cell phones important to fake id manufacturers? Most of them operate perfectly legally on the internet selling Fake IDs.

Why would a legitimate business need untraceable cell phones, am I missing something here?

Seems like the Governor’s Fraudulent ID Task Force is trying to give those who make fake IDs a bad name.

More about ID Cards.

SEGAMAT: Malaysians will soon get to have personalised registration number plates for their vehicles, by paying an extra fee.

“However, there are still some finer details which we need to look into before Malaysians can apply to have their own personalised registration number plates,” Transport Minister Datuk Seri Chan Kong Choy said here.

“We are also looking into the formats for the plate, whether to allow names, numbers or both,” he said after opening the Segamat Road Transport Department branch office here yesterday.

The Road Transport Department (JPJ) has submitted the proposal to the ministry for evaluation.

Imagine that, in Malaysia personalised car number plates are currently NOT available where in the west it’s the norm (at least I assume it’s the norm?)!

I wonder why they’ve never introduced them until now, would be interested in a comment if anyone knows the history of this?

The US House Aviation Subcommittee yesterday heard how congressional investigators used false IDs to gain access to a series of federal buildings and two commercial airports, and how a copy of the report detailing their success was later found in an al-Qaida cave in Afghanistan. The investigators were 100 per cent successful in getting past security, but apparently less so in the case of their own report’s security.

Subcommittee Chairman John Mica told a hearing on biometric ID in aviation that the deployment of more secure ID needed to be accelerated, given that terrorists are interested in gaining access to restricted airport areas. The congressional investigators had made their fake IDs using software downloaded from the Internet, and apparently this passed muster.

So basically congressional investigators are doing research on fake IDs and then allowing it to fall into the hands of terrorists, hey why not!!