The Identity Thief Read Free Page A

photograph of him, which I got after a lot of Googling, was taken when he was a student at Kuwait University at the age of 19." She held it up. "Look like anyone we know?"
    The group photo, taken outside of what appeared to be a dormitory, was fuzzy, but with the large somber dark eyes, heavy brows and prominent nose, he could easily have been X as a teen. Nevertheless, X mockingly protested.
    "Oh, come on - is my schnoz really that big?"
    "Trust me, it is."
    X grinned. For starters, that would make forging a passport and an international driver's license a cinch.
    "Well, you've got my attention," he said. "What's his net worth?"
    "$6.2 billion."
    "Did you say billion ?"
    "Billion."
    "You're kidding me."
    "No, his father was some kind of shipping tycoon whose specialty was building yachts for the royal family. Ali was the sole heir. And he's managed to burn through only about a third of it since his old man kicked the bucket seven years ago. Which makes him a skinflint by international playboy standards, I guess."
    X did some quick math in his head (that was another of his gifts). Assuming that they didn't rob Nazeer blind, desirable though that might be, but managed to bilk him of even 1 percent of his fortune, that would still be a cool $60 million.
    He hugged her and as her big bosom crushed against him, he wasn't surprised to find that she had what his female Generation Y intern had once somewhat provocatively termed "a titty boner". (X didn't much go in for such vulgar slang).
    He could hardly blame her for being aroused; the thought of a rip-off of this magnitude made even the usually cool-as-ice X lightheaded. Sam had always been a good "catcher," grifter lingo for the person who finds a mark. But this time she had outdone herself.
    "You know what that means?" he exclaimed. "We've hit the jackpot, Honey Hips. One last score and we're retired and living in Sri Lanka."
    This was a private joke of course. Sometimes they'd say Madagascar, sometimes Nepal, sometimes Outer Mongolia. In actuality, they both knew they enjoyed the game, needed the game, too much to give it up. But they talked this way every time they struck what appeared to be the mother lode.
    "Guess I'm going to have to brush up on my Arabic - and grow a beard," he said.
    A few moments later, forgoing the formality of fully undressing, they were doing the horizontal mambo on the scuffed hardwood floor, X with his trousers around his ankles and Samantha with her dress hoisted up to her waist and thong hauled to one side. Samantha insisted on being called names for the duration of the act - not that he simply talk dirty, but that he lambaste her as a "dirty slut" and other increasingly filthy and demeaning epithets as she approached the peak of passion.
    Perhaps Samantha wanted to be punished, X sometimes mused afterward. But what did he know? He was no psychoanalyst. In any event, this night's frenzied lovemaking session was one of their most intense in months, fueled by the promise of the vast riches awaiting them.

Chapter 3
     
THE SETUP
     
    Over the next few weeks, based on personal data Ali Nazeer had so graciously and unwittingly provided, they went to work recreating key personal documents including a passport, international driver's license and two credit cards. Among the pieces of information the real Nazeer had revealed in their phishing expedition were his driver's license number and his passport number. An associate of X's - you would probably call him an accomplice but X thought of him as a subcontractor - provided the identity thief with a blank Kuwaiti passport purchased from a contact at the embassy for a price of $2,000.
    X viewed this as an investment. Beginning with an authentic blank passport, it was child's play to forge either a paper or plastic passport, even to duplicate a hologram-protected image. "When filled out correctly, a blank passport is impossible to detect," X lectured the interns more than once.
    X was amply equipped to carry