As detectives and agents served the $1 million arrest warrant at the south Sacramento home of Tien Trong Nguyen, he was printing out hundreds of counterfeit credit and gift cards.
According to sheriff's Detective Jim Hudson, Nguyen supplied seven people with stolen personal information, which they used to fraudulently obtain Wal-Mart credit cards. They then purchased more than $400,000 in merchandise and gift cards from Wal-Mart stores from Dixon to Redding.
Nguyen obtained victims' personal information through "phishing," a criminal activity that sends fraudulent "pop-up" Internet messages to acquire sensitive information such as passwords and credit card details.
"This is a fine example of agency cooperation between the federal government and local agencies to deal with this serious problem of identity theft called phishing," said Sheriff Ed Bonner. "Clearly, this suspect adversely affected thousands of people's credit nationwide."
Nguyen, who is also a resident of Southern California, had seven computers running in his home.
