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Not even a criminal can resist bragging about a delicious meal. A steak-loving, Instagram-loving foodie unwittingly gave authorities evidence of his identity when he took a photo of his very expensive meal, eventually leading to his own arrest.
The Sun Sentinel reports that identity thief Nathaniel Troy Maye was tracked down thanks to Instagram with his dinner party. The IRS had been looking for May for some time, and he ended up unknowingly making the ordeal a lot easier. His accomplice Tenise Thomason was also caught.
The IRS conducted an undercover “witness” operation to link Mayo to identity theft and gather evidence that this suspect was responsible for the illegal sale of stolen identities. When it came to the second and final meeting between the witness and Maya, which they agreed would take place at Morton’s, the suspect was to hand over 50,000 identities to be used to file false income tax returns.
The disc was discovered to contain only 50 identities, but investigators discovered some hidden metadata that proved the disc belonged to Maya. The only problem was that the IRS couldn’t prove that the person they were meeting with was actually Maye.
Fortunately, Maye did the heavy lifting for the investigators. IRS Special Agent Louis Babino scoured the web for any clues as to Maye’s true identity. What he found was an Instagram profile called “TROYMAYE,” but the key point was a photo of Morton’s steak. The date and location of the photo, which Maye was unable to make any easier for investigators, was dated the day of the meeting with the caption “Morton’s.” Once we got that detail out of the way, it only took a little more digging into Maye’s Instagram account to reveal a photo of the profile’s owner, Nathaniel Troy Maye, and it all came together.
That gave detectives enough evidence to search Thomason’s apartment, which turned up a trove of stolen identities — more than 55,000.
After being caught in the suspected crimes, the duo pleaded guilty to “aggravated identity theft and possession of an unauthorized access device,” according to The Sun Sentinel.
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Categories: GAMING
Source: newstars.edu.vn