In Brief

TRIDENT OFFERS IDENTITY RECOVERY COVERAGE

Trident Insurance Services LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Argonaut Group Inc. of San Antonio, has partnered with The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company (HSB), a Connecticut-based provider of specialty insurance and services, to offer identity recovery insurance as a standard part of its coverage for public entities.

The coverage combines identity theft insurance with services that help identity fraud victims restore their credit history and reimburses victims for costs they incur to resolve problems resulting from identity theft.

Membership applications collected at a video store allegedly became a treasure trove of confidential information for one of the store’s clerks.

According to a report in the Washington Examiner, a 25-year-old former employee at a Blockbuster Video store in the District of Columbia used credit card numbers from as many as 65 customers to fraudulently obtain goods and services, racking up $117,000 in unauthorized purchases from February 2003 through April 2004.

Many of the purchases were ordered over the telephone using the credit card numbers and providing the correct address. The suspect or an accomplice would then wait near the home on the delivery date to retrieve what was being delivered.

Hard drives and laptop computers containing personal information from approximately 1,200 home loan applications were stolen from a Modesto, Calif., office prompting the company to warn its customers of possible identity theft, according to a report in the Modesto Bee (Modesto, Calif.).

According to the report, the thefts were discovered March 28 at Valley Wide Financial Service when employees found that six desktop computers had been disassembled and five laptops were stolen. Two of the laptops and all of the hard drives had completed home loan applications on them.