To Catch an Identity Thief
To the casual observer, Abraham Abdallah was a mild-mannered busboy at a trendy Middle Eastern restaurant in Brooklyn. To the Gotham detectives who arrested him in early March, the 32-year-old New Yorker was one of the world's great con artists. Last week, the New York Post reported that Abdallah nearly pulled off an unprecedented scheme to assume the identities and steal the fortunes of America's celebrities and power brokers.
The annual Forbes magazine list of the 400 richest people was Abdallah's bible, as he sweet-talked bank employees and staffers into disclosing private information and used voice mail and E-mail to pretend he was someone else. Eventually, Abdallah built detailed dossiers on more than 200 bigwigs. Police say he planned to tap their credit and their investment and brokerage accounts. "He was very innovative and creative," says New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. Indeed, when nabbed, Abdallah had a copy of the credit report of Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen. Abdallah's attorney admits it looks as if his client's goal was to "pilfer and steal from these people" but says the busboy had another purpose for collecting the information. He won't say what.
The alleged plot was exposed in December when Abdallah E-mailed Merrill Lynch, requesting a transfer of $10 million from a California tycoon's account into a dummy account at a foreign bank. Merrill Lynch contacted the tycoon and uncovered the ruse. "We haven't discovered who he targeted and how much he hit these people for," says Peter Nash of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in New York, which tracked mail and merchandise sent to him in the names of rich individuals. But they say they'll keep on looking.
This story appears in the April 2, 2001 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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