You think Identity Theft Is Bad? Try Child Porn Charges

April 5, 2008

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Remember about 5 years ago when there was a big international child porn crackdown that was most famous for busting (though formally clearing) Pete Townshend from the Who?

There was one other victim that was about to have his life turned upside down.

Going from Bad To Worse

When the police in the US busted a company that processed credit cards for porn sites, a list of credit cards that had been used for kiddie porn was passed on to British Investigators.

One of those cards belonged to Simon Bunce, a resident of Hampshire, England.

Based solely on that credit card use, Bunce was arrested on suspicion of possessing and distributing child porn.

Needless to say, he lost his $250,000 job and became estranged from his family.

If You Want Something Done Right, Do It Yourself

There was only one problem with all of this - Bunce didn’t do it. Getting the authorities to believe him was another story.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the police weren’t too excited about helping out an accused kiddie porn offender clear his name, so he took it on himself.

He got his records from a Freedom of Information Act request, and then traced the IP address that was used for his transaction. Did it show Hampshire, England? Of course it didn’t. It showed that the transaction was made from Jakarta, Indonesia. He could also show that at that exact time, he was using the card to buy dinner in London.

Several months later he was finally able to convince police and charges were dropped.

A case like this really makes me think that a service like TrustedID’s [aff] credit card monitoring service is a good idea. Maybe if that service had picked up that his card had been stolen, he would have been able to act before all this mess had started.

Do you have any other “nightmare” identity theft stories that you’ve heard of?

Source: Fox News

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Posted in Cases, Identity Theft, TrustedID