Bad Credit, No Credit, No Problem, use Someone Else's

[notorial dissent]

A Denver man was arrested in LA Aug 7 at LA International Airport on charges of bank fraud conspiracy and making false statements to lenders. Wise and several co-conspirators have been charged in this and he was arraigned on Aug 8.

Christopher Robert Wise of Wise Funding and Wise Profits, etc, made the promise that they could get anyone funding, bad credit, no credit, no problem, just use someone else's and take the money and run. He spent a good portion of his time running seminars selling his method, and was ultimately arrested for having used his own product it would seem.

[Lambkin]

http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2013 ... credit.php

A federal indictment charges Wise with one count of bank fraud and three counts of making false statements to a financial institution, feds say. Each count carries its own 30-year-max sentence.

[fortinbras]

This particular con seems to predate the usual internet identity theft. Fully a 25 and 30 years ago I was hearing about phony "credit remedy" outfits that actually had, through some nefarious means, access to huge files of names & SSNs of innocent people.

The remedy was euphemistically called "File Segregation" - but it was identity theft.
A financially troubled customer would pay a substantial upfront fee in cash, the villains would browse through their voluminous files until they found some innocent (and presumably solvent) person with a similar name, and the customer was told "From now on, spell your first name this way, use this middle initial, tell people your SSN is such-and-such and your birthdate is so-and-so, and everything will go smoothly." As this was before the internet fuss about identity theft, it is even possible that some of these customers thought that the very strange things they were told to do were legal.

[notorial dissent]

An oldy, and not a goody. Didn't work way back when, and doesn't work any better now.

In other words, identity theft and/or fraud, regardless of how they dress that particular pig up.

I suspect, that as they get further and deeper in to Mr Wise's case they will find a lot more, and there will be a number of corollary cases to come out of it when some of his clients come more fully in to the light. I am curious as to who his co-conspirators will turn out to be, and how fast the other cockroaches scatter now. I wouldn't be surprised if the indictment is not amended at least once before this is all over with.

[Judge Roy Bean]

The classic "file segregation" scheme was basically establishing a EIN and then using that when applying for credit, thus avoiding discovery of a troubled history. Although thousands of people paid some of the promoters to learn how to do it, many more learned of it second and third hand and it was spread all over the 'net. (And I'm sure there are bozo's still trying it.)

The bureaus caught on to it fairly quickly and they now can match a person, address, etc., etc., etc., to any identification number(s).

Wise seems to have stepped it up a notch. If memory serves, the EIN/TIN's he "sold" were for entities that had become more-or-less dormant but still had reasonable credit scores.