"Dietrich" tracked by medical bills

(CBS) LOS ANGELES A 26-year-old man was in custody Friday after being on the run for more than a year following a high-speed crash in Malibu that left a rare $1 million Ferrari Enzo in pieces.

The driver of the Ferrari, Swedish national Stefan Eriksson, had previously claimed that a mysterious German man named "Dietrich" had been driving when the collision with the utility pole occurred. Eriksson failed two alcohol breath tests at the scene of the crash, and was later charged with embezzlement related to leased car exports and his video game firm Gizmondo.

Irish native Kearney, who was a passenger in the Ferrari Enzo during the crash, fled the country after the crash but was smuggled back into the U.S. a year later from Tijuana, Mexico.

Authorities tracked him down this week, thanks to medical bills generated after his return to California and sent to a Marina del Rey address, the source said.

Kearney was charged with perjury and obstructing, both misdemeanor crimes. Why would police track this man via medical bills for two misdemeanors? In order to force him to testify against Eriksson in a media-frenzy drunk driving case, undoubtedly.

Medical records are an open book to anyone with a subpoena. All too often medical professionals allow access to records after only an informal request from a detective or investigator. More troubling is the ease with which private investigators and other outside parties seem to get medical records via bribery, pretexting, or court-ordered legal discovery.

If Kearney hadn't had his medical bills sent to his address of record -- the address he gave to police investigators at the crash site -- he might not be under indictment for two misdemeanors today.

Remember, also, that lying to police is usually a misdemeanor and lying to federal agents is a felony. Just ask Martha Stewart.

Read the Findlaw article "How to Avoid Going to Jail under 18 U.S.C. Section 1001 for Lying to Government Agents" for more information on lies within federal jurisdiction and how to decline a federal interview by invoking counsel.

Revenge website targets credit score

Foxnews.com reports yesterday that an illegal website offered to ruin the credit score of anyone for a small fee, and even to arrange to have them suspected of bank fraud.

Making numerous credit applications with the victim's SSN and DOB and invented addresses and names will cause the person's credit to be put on hold, claims the website.

The UK-centric web-based service also offered to create false bank documents, identity cards, automobile registry papers, paychecks and tax forms.

Such fraudulent services are doubtless short-lived when discovered by the public and law enforcement agencies, but this report is illustrative of the types of financial and bureaucratic vulnerability most people have in modern society. You can imagine the potential ramifications in your life if your credit cards, credit line and bank account were suspended, even if only temporarily, and the trouble and costs to have the situation resolved.

Let this threat serve as a another reminder to shred documents, jealously guard your financial privacy and personal information, check your credit report, and avoid situations that could compromise personal data.

Irish Grandparent? Irish Passport

Many people who can document that one of their grandparents was an Irish citizen, can apply for Irish citzenship via entry in the Register of Foreign Births, and then apply for an Irish passport. Children of those foreign-born Irish citizens with Irish grandparents are eligible too, as long as the child was born after the parent's citizenship was recorded by an Irish Consulate.

Before applying, I investigated and verified that Ireland had no military draft law and did not tax citizens living abroad, thereby making it safe to proceed. What were the advantages beyond maintaining a link to our ancestral homeland being a conversation piece? The idea of having an EU passport that allowed me to travel and work in the, now 27, nations of the EU without having to hassle with visas and work permits that are usually required to travel, live or work in a foreign nation was appealing. Also, being familiar with the bloody history of the 20th century as well as having worked in both aviation and IT, two areas where backup systems are standard operating procedure, I felt that a costless backup citizenship might make sense for my descendants. The biggest reason was probably the potential advantages it would offer to my children and me in the global economy which, even then was the apparent trend for the future.

U.S. citizens can become dual citizens as long as the alternate citizenship is granted after their U.S. citizenship, as the U.S. citizenship process requires an applicant to renounce all other citizenships. Ireland, by contrast, does not require an applicant to renounce other citizenships.

Check your assets every year

The San Francisco Chronicle on "unclaimed assets" seized under California state law, unbeknownst to its owners:

Years ago, Carla Ruff stored her grandmother's jewelry and a file of personal documents in a safe-deposit box at her bank in San Francisco's Noe Valley, thinking they would always be there when she wanted them.

Not so. Without giving her notice or acting on evidence that she'd forgotten about her cache, the bank's staff, under the auspice of the state, determined the contents of her box to be unclaimed property.

In July 1997, bank records show, the pearl necklace and diamond-encrusted pin, real estate and insurance documents as well as her birth certificate were all removed. The paperwork was shredded and thrown away. Her jewelry was auctioned off on eBay -- for a fraction of its $80,000 value.

Ruff said she didn't know what had happened until January 2006, when an illness in the family sent her to the Bank of America branch looking for the deed to her house. Weeks later, the bank manager told Ruff that her property had been seized by the state under a law that requires the government to take control of lost or abandoned assets.

Elaborate privacy arrangements can discourage us from checking up on our assets as frequently as we should. Sometimes it's difficult to verify financial arrangements while maintaining strict privacy procedures such as mail drops, or depositing cash into accounts in person in lieu of automated transfers (to avoid creating a paper trail linking the accounts together through the transaction).

Nonetheless, it behooves anyone with assets held by an outside institution or with agreements with business associates to check their status occasionally. It's something we should plan for when setting up privacy arrangements:

• U.S. Post Office box fees can usually only be paid a year in advance -- a renewal notice should come 30 days before payment is due.
  
• Safe deposit boxes should be visisted at least yearly.
  
• Financial accounts should be checked monthly for evidence of unauthorized access or identity theft.
  
• Many types of insurance contracts must be renewed yearly.
  
• LLC costs may be due after the first three years depending on provider.
  
• Trusts and attorneys should be contacted yearly or more frequently.
  
• Financial accounts with tax implications must be verified at the required tax intervals.
  

How Insurance companies price your Car Insurance

Insurance can be an adversarial business relationship, unfortunately. In some circumstances, the more your insurer knows about you, the higher the rate they will charge you. This gives them every incentive to ferret out information pertinent to your insurance risks -- or what they believe affects your insurance risks, anyway.

A Consumerist article gives insight into the privacy implications and pricing strategy of auto insurance.

Note that insurance companies access the following databases to actuarially determine liklihood of an insurance claim: CLUE report, credit report, and driving history.

As with credit reports, a critical source of information is what you tell the insurance company:

Driving histories go back 36 months, except in New York (which is 40 months). Your history is composed from three reports; your MVR or Motor Vehicle Report, the state database of your ticketed driving history; your CLUE report, a collection of previous insurance companies reports stating the numbers of claims you've had, and YOU. If you say you got in an accident, were never sited for it and never claimed it on your insurance, but you still tell us, it'll be put on your record with an approximate date.

Credit score and insurance rates

It is illustrative how your credit report affects your insurance score, and thus your insurance rates. By 2001, 92% of insurers were considering credit scores when quoting insurance.

Remember that information you give to an insurance company may well end up on your credit report. Along with the usual distinguishing characteristics (name, date of birth, SSN or other national number), insurers will likely report your submitted information to the credit reporting bureay. This could happen even if you're just getting an insurance quote, and needs to be taken into account if you're keeping your street address confidential.

Complete truthfulness doesn't always pay when it comes to dealing with insurers who will collect every personal detail to accurately assess you with their actuarial tables.

Bermuda to track road vehicles with RFID

RFID Journal reports that the Caribbean nation of Bermuda plans to tag registered cars and trucks with RFID transponders to increase road registration compliance and revenues.

The ISO 18000-6B standardized, 915 MHz tags will be embedded in tamper-resistant windscreen stickers, and are made by 3M. The laser readers placed by the side of the road are made by Transcore.

Sabotaging the RFID tag is ineffective because the RFID interrogation is combined with an ANPR system:

If a car arrives at an intersection and no interrogation of an RFID tag can be performed, the system will take a picture of the car's license plate. Using optical character recognition software, the system will read the vehicle's plate numbers and input them into a database so a citation can be automatically issued. The same system will be employed to detect commercial vehicles operating in restricted areas during rush hour without permits.

Bermuda's Transport Control Department expects that all of the island nation's registered cars should be RFID tagged by June 2008. Motorcycles will be exempt from the RFID tagging requirement, though authorities may later decide to being them into the program.

The privacy implications of the mandated RFID transponders are profound. It is very feasible for groups unassociated with Bermuda's Transport Control Department to develop the ability to read the RFID tags and track specific automobiles by their electronic ID. In fact, an older version of this technology was used by a United States intelligence agency during the Cold War to track Soviet attaches whenever they crossed one of a handful of Washington, D.C. bridges and passed outside the 20-mile unrestricted transit limit.

Confessions of a Money Launderer

Money launderer Kenneth Rijock kept a low profile and
avoided creating a paper trail despite constant financial entanglements for his clients:

"I maintained absolutely no bank accounts in the US, operating on a strict cash payment basis to ensure that no records of any business transactions for criminal clients existed. This is much harder that it sounds, for though one might use third-party accounts that don't alert law enforcement investigators, it is more prudent to avoid it all together. I had no US bank accounts for five years, using an overseas tax haven account to obtain cashier's cheques drawn on a New York correspondent account very sparingly, and only for totally innocent personal transactions."

"Own nothing in your own name: rent your home and office, either lease an automobile or place it in the name of a third party. In short, make enquiries of your assets more difficult to discover, and information about your operation more difficult to link to you or your clients. If possible, reduce your profile even more by closing out legitimate business, whilst maintaining a fictitious facade that legitimate business is ongoing. return all telephone calls, but decline new business due to purported schedule overload."