TJ Maxx Data Thief Irving Escobar Sentenced

Irving Escobar, one of the main parties responsible for the T.J. Maxx database theft, has been sentenced to 5 years in prison and has to pay about $600,000 in restitution.

This is the latest news in the T.J. Maxx Identity theft fiasco, where more than 45 million personal records of their customers were stolen over an 18 month period, records which included customer names, credit card numbers, addresses, etc. I don’t shop at T.J. Maxx because my wife’s information was among those stolen and T.J. Maxx did not notify her or alert her or anything – not even an apology. But enough about me, back to Escobar’s story.

In March, Irving Escobar pleaded guilty to participating in an organized scheme to defraud and four others involved also pleaded guilty. A few others were arrested and have since been sentenced to probation: Dianelly Hernandez, Julio Alberti, Reinier Alvarez and Zenia Llorente. Escobar’s mother, Nair Alvarez, was deported to Venezuela after she pleaded guilty in March – hahaha, that is funny.

Authorities estimated a total loss of $3 million could be attributed to Escobar and his co-defendants on a nationwide scale. The unfortunate things, in my opinion, are 1) taxpayers now have to pay for these morons to live in prison, 2) with good behavior, they will probably not have to server their complete sentence and 3) identity theft victims in these cases will spend more time than that trying to clear up their credit.

Here is a post we did on what you should do if you suspect identity theft.