Two men linked to at least eight fraud cases involving the theft of laptops with the use of fake identification and QR codes have been arrested, investigators announced.<\/p>\n
A pair of men impersonated actual customers who purchased laptops at Apple stores and other businesses by using fraudulent IDs and bogus QR codes, according to the Glendale Police Department.<\/p>\n
Paul Giles said he was a victim of one of these scams. He wasn\u2019t aware until he tried to pick up his purchase at the Americana at Brand.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the time I got the initial email from Apple saying it\u2019s ready to pick up and the time that they actually went to the store to pick it up,\u201d Giles said.<\/p>\n
The victim said the theft happened in a matter of about four hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was someone who impersonated me. Showed the ID, showed the QR code that was through the email system and with that, \u2018Paul Giles\u2019 got the laptop,\u201d Giles said.<\/p>\n
Giles said a detective later informed him that thieves buy information and are told where to go to pick up goods.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really easy to get this information,\u201d said Jim Stickley, a cybersecurity expert. \u201cYou can jump on the dark web. There\u2019s sites that are literally dedicated to selling just these types of information.”<\/p>\n
Stickley added that oftentimes, victims are unaware that their emails have been compromised.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything’s in the cloud now, so they’ll access your email,\u201d he said. \u201cSo once they gain access, they’ll just put a rule in that basically forwards all of your emails. So now you get a copy and they get a copy and you’d have no idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police did not release the names of the men who were arrested in connection with the scheme. The department said they\u2019re searching for a third individual, but did not provide a detailed description of that person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two men linked to at least eight fraud cases involving the theft of laptops with the use of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":160311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,1035,40889,2961,224,5337],"class_list":{"0":"post-160310","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-crime-and-courts","11":"tag-glendale","12":"tag-la","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-losangeles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115059472841741162","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}