In New Scam, ID Thief Preys on Shopper.

Byline: Peter Lewis

Mar. 7--An unusually creepy and clever form of identity theft has cropped up in Washington.

Here's how it works: Con artists prowl retail aisles on the lookout for victims. When a customer steps up to make a purchase, the thief pulls out a cell phone and calls the cashier. Posing as store security, the thief indicates there's a past problem with the customer.

Wanting to protect the store, the cashier then requests additional information from the customer, passing along driver's-license and credit-card numbers to "security."

"It's troubling," Chuck Harwood, regional director of the Federal Trade Commission, said yesterday. "I haven't heard of this before."

Ditto for officials with the state attorney general's Consumer Protection Division, the King County Sheriff's Office and Sears, the giant retailer whose Shoreline store was the scene of the crime. …