South Africa: Identity theft is taking on a grisly new turn

[Paul Ferguson <fergdawgster () gmail com>]

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Via iol.co.za.

[snip]

The department of home affairs is urging South Africans to contact its
national call centre to find out if they're still alive.

That's because identity theft is taking a grisly new turn, with some
fraudsters stealing ID numbers and personal information to register people
as dead, in order to benefit from insurance policies.

In other instances, the "deceased" are guilty of colluding with doctors,
police officers and their own friends and family, to con the department of
home affairs and insurance companies, says departmental spokesperson Joseph
Mohajane.

He said on Monday it was "a bit difficult" to say how often this sort of
fraud was occurring, but confirmed that it was a national phenomenon which
was probably coming to light more frequently, because people had just been
involved in voter registration drives across the country.

He said some people were arriving at registration stations only to discover
that their status on the national population register was "deceased".

This was the result of forged death certificates, Mohajane said, and
underscored the need for people to keep their identity documents safe and
not to give out personal details to anyone "for any reason".

[snip]

More:
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?from=rss_News&set_id=1&click_id=79&art_id=vn
20090224013339377C455449

- - ferg

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-- 
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawgster(at)gmail.com
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
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