A Chinese organization crime group, based in New York, is accused of stealing the identities of at least 3,000 Asian Americans living in Texas to provide “look-alike” illegal aliens with fake IDs.
Officials with the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) revealed the massive identity breach late last month in testimony before the state’s House Appropriations Committee.
The goal of the Chinese gang was to find Asian Americans in Texas with driver’s licenses whose identities they could steal and match to Chinese illegal aliens living in the United States, DPS officials detailed.
The Dallas Morning News reported:
The Department of Public Safety has identified at least 3,000 Texans who have been affected and is investigating more potential cases, department officials told House budget writers during a hearing Monday. Texans of Asian descent were targeted by what McCraw described as “a Chinese organized crime group based in New York working in a number of different states.”
No state systems were hacked, officials said. Instead, the criminal actors were able to fraudulently obtain the licenses in a scheme McCraw described this way: personal data about Texans of Asian descent was obtained on the dark web, including credit card and personal information, and then used to request replacement driver’s licenses from the state. The group specifically targeted Asians of various backgrounds with the hopes of finding “look-alikes” to match with Chinese nationals here in the country illegally, he said.
While DPS issues licenses, they are ordered through a portal operated by a separate agency, the Texas Department of Information Resources. At least four thousand fraudulent accounts were created and 2,400 licenses were shipped to “third-party addresses,” according to a letter from DPS notifying legislators of the problem.
Stephen B. Wicker, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell University, said that deleting data about yourself from the internet is a matter of personal preference, and how to do that is given below.
If you’re interested in knowing more about the topic, read about it here.
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