Feds Bust NYC Employee|for Identity Theft

(CN) - Federal authorities in Manhattan have charged another city employee with identity theft, accusing her of selling fake Social Security documents.

Adrienne Toney, a community associate at New York City's Department of Parks and Recreation, was arrested Tuesday after she allegedly sold fake Social Security letters addressed to ten different people to an unidentified buyer.

In 2008, Toney wrote phony letters from the Social Security Administration, claiming it had received requests for replacement Social Security cards, according to the indictment. She then sold the letters to the same anonymous source who had provided her with the names.

"Adrienne Toney, the defendant, believed that the person to whom she sold the False Identification Documents would use the [documents] to obtain other identification documents, such as driver's licenses, U.S. passports, and birth certificates."

The indictment says Toney wrote the letters on her home computer, and then printed them from a memory drive on her work computer at the Parks Department's Recreation Center.

Toney is charged with one count of fraud with identification documents and one count of aggravated identity theft. She faces up to 15 years in prison for the fraud with identification documents charge, while the aggravated identity theft carries a two-year mandatory minimum sentence and a maximum fine of $250,000.

Two other New York City employees have been sentenced for similar activities recently.

Former Human Resource Administration employee Michael Wills received two years in prison for selling the stolen birth certificates and Social Security cards of welfare recipients. Department of Mental Health and Hygiene employee Edward Jones was sentenced to eight months for stealing and selling parental identification information from birth certificates.

The prosecution is being handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Carrie H. Cohen.

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