Pretexting Employees Sentenced
Legal News, Training May 19th. 2009, 10:49amWhen I teach my classes on skiptracing I often mention that one thing you cannot do when trying to obtain information about a person is to pretend to BE that person. ”Pretexting is the practice of getting your personal information under false pretenses. Pretexters sell your information to people who may use it to get credit in your name, steal your assets, or to investigate or sue you.”
The employee in this case, reported in this article from the P-I, pretended to be the person that he was hired to find. The information obtained was then sold to others. So when you are looking for information, you must be careful not to use this method. Washington state’s Pretexting law, RCW 9.26A.040, says in part: ”(1) A person is guilty of the unauthorized sale or procurement of telephone records if the person:
(a) Intentionally sells the telephone record of any resident of this state without the authorization of the customer to whom the record pertains;
(b) By fraudulent, deceptive, or false means obtains the telephone record of any resident of this state to whom the record pertains.”
The purchaser of the information was just as guilty as the person who obtained the information. If you need to find information about a person, be sure to do it legally.
May 19th, 2009 at 11:46 am
BNT Investigations apparently used a method called impersonation — pretending to be the person whose information you are seeking — to obtain Social Security Administration and other protected government data. This is illegal because financial and medical information is only disclosable under restrictive conditions: if you don’t have legal authority you have to be the customer. Pretexting — a ruse to obtain information — is a method that is illegal only in limited situations: if it’s specifically barred by law, as it is in Washington State, but, in that case, only for obtaining or selling customer telephone call records. While impersonation does rely on pretexting, the act of pretexting is not usually illegal. For example, if my caller ID displays on your phone when I call you as coming from “Grocery” but I’m a PI asking for your brother’s name to mail something, I’ve visually deceived you, but I didn’t impersonate anyone. Acts of fraud and ID theft are always illegal.