A United States District sentenced Isaac Allen this week to a 16 ½ years in the slammer for identity theft and bank fraud.  

Judge James Whittemore had recently sent away one of Allen's co-conspirators, Tara Pasco, to seven years in for her part in the illegal deed doing.

According to the Department of Justice, Allen pleaded guilty to charges of false statements to a bank and identity theft on September 13, 2007. Pasco, age 34, pleaded guilty to bank fraud and identity theft charges on October 4, 2007.

According to court documents, Allen and Pasco, along with other members of their ring, defrauded a series of banks in Florida, including Fifth Third Bank, BB&T, Bank of America and other financial institutions, by stealing names, social security numbers and other personal identifying information of individuals and then posing as these persons to obtain credit cards and credit lines from these financial institutions, the DOJ stated. Pasco and Allen then used the credit cards, drew down the credit lines and absconded when payment was due. They stole  more than $150,000 through this scheme.

Identity theft is a growing problem. Over 120 million people in the US had personal data exposed in 2007 according to research from the nonprofit organization the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) which reported 446 separate breaches exposing 128 million records.

The data shows a more-than sixfold increase over its 2006 figures, when 312 incidents were recorded, involving more than 19 million individuals.

And there seems to be little regard by many companies entrusted with keeping identities secure. 

Recently the Federal Trade Commission got a mortgage company to pay $50,000 in fines for leaving loan documents with consumers’ sensitive personal and financial information in and around a dumpster.