Identity Thief Receives Punishment of 75 Months in Jail After Stealing $750,000
A naturalized citizen originally hailing from South Korea was sentenced in a Virginia identity theft court case last week to more than six years in prison last week as punishment for criminal identity theft crimes that resulted in him stealing almost $750,000 from unknowing victims.
According to U.S. Attorney Neil H. MacBride of Virginia, 48-year-old Jungwook Oh of Manassas, Virginia received a sentence of 75 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release as punishment for identity theft crimes including mail fraud as well as aggravated criminal identity theft.
The identity theft case revealed that Oh had conducted numerous multi-step criminal identity theft and credit card schemes in Virginia, New York, and Illinois between November 2007 and June 2009.
Using foreign workers from the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Oh would obtain Chinese passports and U.S. Social Security cards. Using the fraudulent IDs by doctoring his picture onto the documents, Oh would be able to fraudulently obtain driver's licenses and identification cards from Department of Motor Vehicles' in Illinois.
Using the fraudulent identifications, Oh opened multiple credit lines and bank accounts and was able to obtain hundreds of thousands of dollars through loans and credit that he never intended to pay back. Shell companies were also created as a means for him to funnel money and also as a false employer he could reference when looking to take out loans.
Upon his eventual arrest last June, police confiscated 100 credit and debit cards belonging to 30 different victims, as well as five Social Security cards with names other than his own, and four Illinois ID cards with Oh's picture on them but containing someone else's personal information.
Prior to his sentencing in the identity theft case, Oh pled guilty to the criminal identity theft crimes he was convicted of and began serving punishment for on September 14, 2009.
