Identity Thieves Caught By Instagramming Dinner

You might think it’s all fun and games when you’re Instagramming your dinner before you dig in, but former identity thief Nathaniel Troy Maye will tell you otherwise; doing just that got him arrested.

Nathaniel Troy Maye and Tiwanna Tenise Thomason are now facing up to 12 years in prison after a guilty plea this Friday, but just a few months ago, they were successful thieves offering sweet deals on what they claimed to be a collection of 700,000 stolen identities. A witness working undercover with the IRS had dinner with the pair, and purchased a jumpdrive containing said to pack 50,000 identities, and that’s when the trouble all began.

On the drive (in addition to a scant 50 identities) investigators found metadata referencing one “Troy Maye”. That lead them to the (now private, unfortunately) Instagram account of the same name, which featured a photo of the very meal Troy had eaten at the illicit dinner-meeting and a few selfies that the witness was able to positively identify.

The damning shot of a steak and some mac and cheese and other information gleaned from the account ultimately let investigators track down and arrest the pair, who were found with a collection of 55,000 pilfered identities. So let that be a lesson to you about Instagramming food at business meetings, especially if those meetings are illegal as hell. [South Florida Sun Sentinel via Fark]