Apple’s popular iCloud service went through a security breach that made headlines back in 2014, mostly because of who the victims were. Actress Jennifer Lawrence, model Kate Upton, baseball star Justin Verlander, and actress Kirsten Dunst are just a few of the celebrities whose data and personal photos were stolen in the attack and distributed all over the internet.
Apple conducted an investigation and found that the leaked images were the result of compromised accounts. They explained it as, “A very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions, a practice that has become all too common on the Internet.
This celebrity cyber attack got a lot of attention, but it’s hardly the only time the rich and famous have been victims of identity theft. Check out these stories of three A-list stars who experienced identity theft nightmares. . .
Learn about ReliaShield’s comprehensive identity theft protection today.
Kim Kardashian
Even her bodyguards couldn’t keep America’s most notorious reality star safe from identity theft. And the thief—19 year old Luis Flores, Jr.—didn’t use a fancy phishing scheme or technological security breach. He just called up Kim’s credit card company and got them to change her Social Security Number to his!
Once that was done, he was able to request replacement credit cards mailed to his own address. You see where this is going. . .
Thankfully for Kim, the thief was eventually caught and charged in federal court. He served a three year sentence in prison.
Tiger Woods
If you have Tiger Woods money, life is pretty good. And that’s what Anthony Lamar Taylor thought, too—so he stole Tiger’s Social Security Number and opened up multiple lines of credit in Tiger’s name.
The thief treated himself to a car, furniture, TV sets and more before getting caught. Tiger had to testify in court against Anthony, where Tiger was quoted as saying: “I hate shopping. I have never liked it. I don’t like picking out things. I’d rather go play golf.”
Jennifer Aniston
Maria Gabriella Perez—the owner of a Beverly Hills Salon that boasted clients such as Jennifer Aniston, Anne Hathaway, Melanie Griffith and more—was caught fraudulently using the card numbers of her celebrity patrons without their consent. Maria was able to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars by copying their card numbers down by hand and shopping with them later.
Apparently Jennifer realized what was going on before it blew up into a bigger crime and lawsuit, and stopped seeing the beautician. Jennifer was relieved when Maria was caught and said , “It’s not cool. . .You can’t get away with that.
If you’ll notice, these cases of identity theft weren’t very elaborate. These thieves were not mathematicians or rocket scientists—they were just good at fooling people. Let ReliaShield keep you protected so that this doesn’t happen to you. And if it does, we’ll be there to handle all of the damage control.
Learn more about ReliaShield’s comprehensive identity theft protection today.
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