ID theft victim gets more than she bargained for

[rodericb]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-25/byron-bay-d...

Here is an extraordinary case where a victim of identity theft found herself on the wrong side of US law.

[Ari]

Interesting to read her side of the story. I wonder what the other side is?

[Ian Geary]

Well, there's at least two more sides:

- the corporations who saw counterit goods being sold by "Ms Luke"against whom they took civil court action

- the criminal(s) who found a soft target's PayPal account to exploit

- Maybe another actor is the US courts, that allowed default judgements of $1.8m to be handed down without getting any input from the defendant?

Personally I don't feel I need to hear the story from the "other" side to realise what a nightmare this must be for the lady.

Ok she might have read the emails that she thought were a scam rather than ignoring them initially.

But on the face of it, the use of her hacked PayPal account by criminals has ended up with her being in the frame for the crimes, and she had no easy way to contest it.

And the damages imposed by the courts on what is effectively a PayPal account seem ridiculous...as if it in any way acts acts a deterrent to hackers.

[bitchstewie]

And this is why you ignore all the nagging about strong unique passwords and using 2FA on important accounts at your peril

The US legal system often seems like dogst so little surprises me.