Aug 25, 2009 10:30 pm US/Central
Facial Recognition Software Catches Identity Thief
HOBART, Ind. (CBS) ―
How can one man apply for 26 IDs and get them? He apparently slipped through the cracks until tonight. Now he's being investigated in Illinois and Indiana. CBS 2's Pamela Jones shows us how it happened and how he got caught.
He wasn't Eric Nicholson or Vernon Eugene Lyons. He's really George Helms, a man sitting in jail on seven counts of forgery for allegedly stealing identities.
Authorities say he posed under the names of 10 different people in Indiana and used those names to get identification cards through the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
He allegedly walked into a Hobart License Branch for his 11th try on August 14th.
State officials say the suspect presented all the right documents to try to prove he was who he said he was. He applied for his new ID. He even took the photo.
But his photo had gone through the BMV's new computer program that recognizes and matches facial features.
The Indiana BMV used it to pull up all these ID photos for the suspect and print a poster. An employee here recognized the face and called police.
"It's working. And we just look forward to it keep working and to keep getting those people off the streets," said Dennis Roseborough, Indiana BMV.
Customers applaud the effort.
"We were here. We were here last week," said BMV customer Deborah Choma. "I think it's amazing that nobody else picked it up."
The BMV says Helms got four IDs from July 2000 to October 2001. Then he got six more from October 2008 to February 2009.
Identity theft experts say the crimes could have serious consequences for the financial futures of the victims.
"Consumers don't even realize that they can be a victim of identity theft, and by the time they find out about it, it's usually too late," said Steve Bernas, Better Business Bureau of Chicago. "That's when you find out somebody may have stolen your identity could be anywhere in the world."
We still don't know exactly what George Helms was allegedly doing with all those IDs, but it's safe to say he was up to no good.
And starting in January, Hoosiers will have more hurdles to jump to get their license and state IDs; all to make identity theft harder to do.
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