Rideshare fraudster pleads guilty

The U.S. Department of Justice announced that Flavio Candido da Silva has entered a guilty plea on a count of aggravated identity theft and another count of conspiracy to commit fraud after engaging in rideshare account hacking, BleepingComputer reports. Believed to be the leader of an 18-member team, da Silva spearheaded identity theft and document falsification to create phony rideshare and delivery service accounts that were either sold or rented to other people. Victims' names, birthdates, Social Security numbers, and driver's license data were stolen by da Silva from dark web markets to create counterfeit documents. Moreover, the group directly took photos for bypassing facial recognition checks in rideshare and delivery service apps. The whole scheme was estimated to cost victimized companies nearly $200,000. "As a result of the scheme, Internal Revenue Service Forms 1099 were generated in victims' names for income that conspirators earned from the rideshare and delivery companies," said the Justice Department in a statement. da Silva and his co-conspirators are expected to be sentenced on April 22, 2022.