FROM YOUR HEALTH CLUB TO AL QAEDA
The Boston Globe has a story detailing accusations that a personal trainer at a Bally's Health Club in Cambridge stole members' personal information and sold it to a friend linked to the guys convicted of trying to blow up Los Angeles Airport to celebrate the millennium. (The mastermind of that plot had ties to Osama bin Laden.) The trainer, who members said also taught a great spinning class, apparently used a hand-held skimmer to access and store information from magnetic strips on credit cards. The Bally's members' info was then used to open bank accounts, credit cards accounts, green cards, a fake Canadian passport, and citizenship papers, the Globe reports. One woman found out only when a credit card company called to ask her about some suspicious charges on her account. She said she didn't have an account.

So let me say it again, one way to stop identity theft from escalating is to periodically request your credit reports. You need to spend $25 once a year and send out that letter to the three main credit companies and review your file. Those folks at the health club had no idea that someone was downloading their SSN while they were upstairs sweatin' to the oldies.

- posted by Amy @ 1/31/2002 09:13:00 AM