Louisiana ripe for ID scams

A rogue employee from a company in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, has apparently made numerous illegal purchases with residents' credit and debit cards, the Town Talk reports. There have been "several dozen" purchases made with false identity authentication in states such as Georgia, Virginia, New York, Arizona, Texas, Ohio and Alabama, prompting Rapides Parish sheriff's office detective Winston R. "Bobby" Bell Jr. to call the crimes a "multi-agency investigation," the news source notes. None of the charges were made in Louisiana, which has law enforcement believing the thief was trying to cover his or her tracks. Bell pointed out that Rapides Parish is particularly vulnerable to identity theft, since there is a predominance of elderly people who live in the area. Since they don't typically use the internet, they're not as aware of fraudulent activity that may be occurring on their bank accounts. The news source notes in a separate article that a sheriff from Ouachita County was recently arrested on computer fraud and identity theft charges. Royce Toney allegedly conspired to track a third party's communications and accessed a protected computer without authorization.