Identity Theft
“The devil was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.” [John 8:44]
In October 2002, Abraham Abdallah pled guilty to 12 counts of fraud while on trial for the largest identity theft operation in recent history. The 32-year-old busboy and high school dropout had attempted to steal the identities of Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Oprah Winfrey, Ted Turner, and scores of other famous people whose names he got from a Forbes list of wealthy Americans. When he was caught, he had scores of sensitive personal information noted in his dog-eared copy of the Forbes 400 list – checking account numbers, account balances, social security numbers, cell phone numbers, and more. Abdallah started small: he would call the victim’s bank, giving the clerk publicly available personal information, trying to convince the clerk he was the victim’s financial adviser. With each call he would try to glean just a tiny bit of information – perhaps only an account balance. But hundreds of calls later, Abdallah had enough information to request account transfers from genuine accounts to fraudulent accounts he had created. By the end, he had access to $80 million dollars.
Abdallah had a second scheme: he used his connection with an employee of an online company to steal credit card numbers and would use those numbers to order merchandise, like a machine to make his own credit cards. At the time of his arrest, Abdallah had 800 fake credit cards and had stolen $78,000 worth of goods.
But Abdallah is far from the worst identity thief – the thief who has stolen the identity of the entire world and left us with an immeasurable debt. While God created mankind in His image, the devil has stolen that holy identity and left us sinners. He started small, but his lies eventually gave him access to the entire human race. Yet the devil will not be allowed to practice his thievery forever! The time will soon come when the devil will be “cast into the lake of fire and brimstone” (Revelation 20:10). And the debt of his victims? Praise be to God – Jesus has paid that debt!
