Teen gets 3 years in prison for stealing celebrities' identities
A 19-year-old recently fired from a Florida call center and living at home with his mother stole $71,000 from accounts belonging to Kim Kardashian’s mother, as well as the identities of Kardashian and then-FBI director Robert Mueller.
Authorities said Luis Flores Jr. also tried to access bank accounts belonging to Microsoft’s Bill Gates, reality star Paris Hilton, singer Beyonce Knowles, actor Ashton Kutcher, Vice President Joe Biden, First Lady Michelle Obama, U.S. Marshals Service Director Stacia Hylton and at least one call center colleague. (The breach of the colleague’s account prompted Flores’ firing from the call center.) Flores was sentenced this week in federal court in Orlando to three-and-a-half years in prison for identity theft, the Orlando Sentinel reports.
His mother, Kyah Green, 41, took a plea in the case last year and got probation. According to an an FBI press release, Green denied knowledge of her son’s bank account full of stolen funds even though she had used money from it for purchases and ATM withdrawals.
Agents said the information Flores used, including Social Security numbers and phone numbers for at least some of his victims, was posted online by hackers or, at least in the case of his co-worker, was obtained in connection with his job at the call center.
