Robert Lemos

The Phoenix New Times has a good investigative piece on one of the co-founders of identity-protection firm Lifelock, Robert Maynard, Jr., who apparently has had a checkered past.

According to the piece, Maynard has filed for bankruptcy; he had to close down his previous company, a credit-repair service, after the federal government banned him from the industry for fraud; and he reportedly ran up more than $150,000 on an American Express card that he took out in his father’s name, an act that the New Times rightfully compares to identity fraud.

The piece has numerous details such as:

Federal court records state that Maynard and the other defendants obtained their customers’ banking information and, “in numerous instances . . . withdrew funds from consumers’ checking accounts without authorization.”

Gilbert resident Vincent Calabrese, listed as one of the firm’s creditors because of owed back pay, says he worked for National Credit Foundation for about a year and was there at the end. He says he’ll never forget how the “phone was just going nuts” in the last few weeks with customers reporting unauthorized debits on their bank accounts, usually for about $300 a whack.

“I don’t know what happened. People were getting hit; their accounts were getting hit,” he says. “I thought the information got out on these people on these accounts, and somebody used it.”

The New Times author takes the media to task for not checking out Maynard’s story. Thankfully, there are always a journalist or two that find out enough to whet their curiosity and start an investigation.

One of the Web sites that the New Times has taken to task is Scambusters.org, which has started to do some checking of their own. They posted an in-depth piece on the details that they have been able to confirm, along with several responses by Robert Maynard, Jr. Scambusters.org argues that Lifelock the company has the support of a large number of reputable firms and whether someone should use their service or not should be a decision divorced from the activities of two listed co-founders.

I’ve mentioned Lifelock twice in my writing, as far as I can tell: as a credit-monitoring service in a PC Magazine column and as a service that offers credit-monitoring to kids.

A nod to Kim Zetter at Wired News.

EDITED: The article was edited soon after posting to add the mention of the Scambusters.org article.