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For a few very profitable years, Vanessa and Mario Perez made more than $322,000 by clearing up the blemished credit reports of people with bad bill-paying histories, almost as if by magic.
Federal authorities say the Perezes had a secret weapon: a network of dirty Miami-Dade County, Florida police officers, who wrote 215 falsified police reports. The Perezes used these falsified police reports to claim their customers were victims of identity theft when the customers were not.
The false ID theft claims provided the Perezes' clients with an official excuse for their bad credit histories so they could get negative items removed from their reports. In turn, the customers could boost their credit scores with reporting agencies such as Equifax and obtain credit cards, loans and other financing again.
Vanessa Perez was previously convicted of absentee ballot fraud (along with dozens of others) after Miami's infamous 1997 election.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 22 2015, @10:47AM
In reality, Vanessa and Mario Perez were victims of an identity theft, and those identity thieves falsified those police reports. It was also the identity thieves who did the ballot fraud. You see, here's the police record of this identity theft, which we've just … err … found in the archives.