Police in Oakland, Calif., shut down an alleged identity theft operation that involved potentially thousands of Bay Area victims, The Oakland Tribune reported Monday.
Mishel Caviness-Williams was arrested as she left her apartment, the newspaper said. She reportedly had $4,000 in cash with her.
Upon searching the apartment, police reportedly found card printers, laptop computers, thousands of blank checks with no bank name or account information on them, and nearly 1,000 blank cards that could be used to make fake ATM, credit and debit cards.
Police also found phony driver's licenses, all with Caviness-Williams' picture on them but with different names. They also found documents with the names, Social Security numbers and birth dates of thousands of people, as well as a number of blank Social Security cards.
The arrest of Caviness-Williams was the result of a four-month investigation that included the Bay Area Identity Theft Task Force and the U.S. Secret Service. The investigation began when a city of Oakland employee discovered that someone had cashed a check bearing someone else's name but her account information, the Tribune reported. Similar checks worth $1,000 had been cashed at businesses all over the Bay Area.
