Prosecutors said Park and his co-conspirators operated a scheme to buy Social Security cards from brokers who fraudulently obtained them from Asian immigrants — mostly Chinese nationals — working in American territories, including Guam, American Samoa and Saipan.
[Originally posted January 2012.]
The leader of an identity theft and fraud ring has pleaded guilty in a scheme that federal authorities said operated as a veritable “crime superstore” that reached from northern New Jersey to U.S. territories in the Pacific.
Sang-Hyun “Jimmy” Park admitted in federal court in Newark on Monday that he had helped people fraudulently obtain credit cards, bank accounts and loans using illegally obtained Social Security numbers in a scheme that federal authorities say defrauded various credit card companies, banks and lenders out of about $4 million.
Fifty-three other people — most of them, like Park, Korean immigrants living in New Jersey or New York — were charged in September 2010.
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