While we tend to focus on identity theft stories in the U.S., sometimes an international story crosses our desks that warrants some attention. While New Zealand is mainly known for its recent earth quake, and the importation of the most entertaining Flight of the Concords , a story from New Zealand captured our attention and has us truly flummoxed.
Check this out. A New Zealand politician resigned from his party Friday after admitting he stole a dead baby’s identity to obtain a false passport 26 years ago. David Garrett, a lawmaker with the minor Act Party, made the surprise admission in Parliament this week, calling the identity theft a “harmless prank” when he was in his mid-20s. Check out the full AP story here.
All we can say is really?? Stealing a deceased baby’s identity is a “harmless prank”? The word is that he picked the idea up from the best-selling novel “Day of the Jackal.” He apparently stole a dead baby’s identity in 1984 using details he found on a cemetery tombstone. Police arrested him in 2005 after uncovering the fraud while investigating a similar action by two Israeli secret service agents who stole another dead New Zealand baby’s identity for a passport.
What can we say…we are speechless.
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