Identity theft fraud lingo
Carders: People who buy and sell credit card numbers and personal information online. They do so on “carding” websites.
Fullz: A package of personal information, typically including names, addresses, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, places of work, duration of work, driver’s license numbers, mother’s maiden names, bank account numbers, routing numbers, email names and account passwords.
CVV: The number on the back of a credit or debit card needed to finish an online purchase. Carders need this to use cards online. This term or CC or CVV can be used to mean credit card information.
Liberty Reserve: Or LR, is one of several virtual currencies used by cybercriminals to launder stolen money. The founder of Liberty Reserve was extradited from Spain last month and faces criminal charges in the U.S.
Editors’ note: The following allegations are taken from the federal case against Lance Ealy of Dayton, who was convicted Nov. 19 of using stolen identities to file more than 150 fraudulent federal income tax returns. Ealy is currently at large.
“Hello I have asking for fullz filter for 3 days I really need these asap I have LR right now.”
The email, sent Feb. 22, 2013, was from 28-year-old Lance Ealy of Dayton. It was the third email he sent in three days, all written in the code of the identity thief.
A “fullz” is someone’s identity: a package of information usually including a name, Social Security number, address, date of birth, work history, and sometimes a maiden name and banking account numbers. LR refers to Liberty Reserve, a type of digital currency.
Ealy had purchased 363 fullz from the person he was emailing. The seller ran a couple of websites that sold the information in bulk, even catering to requests for certain age ranges or people on disability. He usually required buyers to pay with Liberty Reserve.
The problem, for Ealy at least, was that federal investigators had found the owner of the website, a 24-year-old Vietnamese national named Hieu Minh Ngo, who was indicted in 2012 and arrested in March 2013 after federal agents lured him to Guam.
Ngo was peddling more than 500,000 fullz, or identities, on his website for less than a dollar each. Many of them had been purchased from the Columbus-Ohio based company, US Info Search, through a service called Court Ventures by pretending to be a private investigator. Ngo’s access to the records was cut off in 2012 after Court Ventures was purchased by the firm Experian, which cancelled its data sharing agreement with US Info Search.
By February 2013, the U.S. Secret Service was in control of Ngo’s email address. So an agent responded to Ealy’s email asking for “Fullz.”
“Why? I want % if u do tax refund,” the agent wrote Feb. 23.
Ealy took the bait.
“IMA expert at tax refunds and we can do much Bussiness together butt u have to get me the right fullz and if do we can make millions but we have to get things done this year because next year it will be harder to do tax refunds,” he wrote, adding: “and once again I’m a expert at doing tax refunds I have been doing for 10 years so lets get things started.”
Ealy did have experience. He filed at least 150 false tax returns asking for refunds ranging from $488 to $4,996, according to the federal court filing, which alleges that he used the identities to open dozens of checking accounts.
“U have credit card #’s in xchange 4 fullz?” the agent wrote.
“I have plenty of cards,” Ealy responded.
The next day, according to the records, Ealy emailed the agent 17 American Express card numbers after the agent offered to trade “2 Amex for 1 fullz.”
Ealy was arrested in October 2013. He was released on his own recognizance and, according to the feds, continued violating the law as his case proceeded through the federal court.
Ealy Googled IRS “tax fraud filters 2014” from his home computer and visited “carding” websites where people can purchase credit card numbers, along with names and expiration dates.
The websites he visited still exist. A Facebook page for one of them lists prices for “CCV,” or credit card information, starting at $80.
On Jan. 24, Ealy made a purchase on a carding website, and another on Jan. 27.
The day before, say federal investigators, he used a credit card number stolen from a Dayton-area woman to buy a $875 leather jacket from the Pelle Pelle website. The company initially rejected the purchase because the billing address was incorrect, but they processed it 10 minutes later after Ealy used an online fax service to send a fake driver’s license.
Federal agents obtained a search warrant for Ealy’s house. In addition to the evidence listed above, they found a Capital One debit card opened in January 2014 and information on an Ally bank account taken out in the name of a Springfield woman. Ealy had already used the woman’s info to pay his cable and telephone bills, and order a pizza from Papa Johns, according to the court filing.
In April of this year, federal prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Michael R. Barrett to revoke Ealy’s bond. Instead, the judge ordered Ealy to wear an ankle monitor.
He wore the ankle monitor through the first nine days of his jury trial. Then, on Nov. 15, Ealy disappeared. Federal marshalls found the ankle monitor behind his couch the next day. The judge continued the trial in his absence and a jury found him guilty on Nov. 19. Ealy faces potentially decades in prison.
Friends say Ealy owned several cars, including a Jaguar. He owns two properties in Dayton with a combined value of about $80,000.
“If Defendant is left to his own devices — as he has been so far — there is little reason that he will not continue to commit such crimes,” prosecutors wrote in their April motion to revoke Ealy’s bond. “And the motivation is clear: Defendant does not appear to have any legitimate means of income. Rather, he seems to support himself mainly through fraud — a particularly malevolent type of fraud because it involves using stolen identities and personal identifying information that is difficult to detect.”
About the Author
