High tech fraud: car theft begins with post-it note

   The days of armed bank heists by men in masks appear to be a thing of the past as criminals have taken stealthier paths to wealth.
  One recent tale begins with a simple post-it note on a door that read "Call me! - Susan."
  A man came home to such a note not long ago and dialed the number written on the paper, assuming it was a female admirer that he had met and forgotten.
   When he called the number and asked for Susan a man answered and said that Susan was not there and took his number in order to get Susan to call him back.
   Susan never called him back, of course.
   Instead the man received a phone call from his bank reviewing various information in his file, including his social insurance number, date of birth and security question.
  The call was made employing technology that allows a call to appear to emanate from a number that it is not actually coming from.
   So the victim would have read the name and number of his bank on his phone, reassuring him that the call was legit.
   It was not.
   The fraud artists had also managed to get into the victim's mailbox in the apartment complex to find out other information about him.
   They used the information they had to create fraudulent identification and then proceeded to get a credit card with a large limit by simply exaggerating earnings, a common practice even by legitimate people.
   The fraud artists then went to a high-end car dealership and purchased an expensive sports car with $25,000 down on the credit card, with further payments to come.
   The car dealership asked all the required questions, thereby legally alleviating themselves of any risk, as the bank and credit card company would be on the hook.
   So the car dealership was not too worried about losing the car.
   Once of possession of the vehicle the thieves then made a deal to sell the car overseas and had it packed and crated to be sent to the new purchaser abroad.
   A fraud detection agent at the bank managed to figure the story out before the car hit the high seas. But other frauds using the same methods are taking place with great regularity.