Falsely accused. Story of a railroaded pedophile.

With Identity theft on the rise, the assumption is you'll lose your money, which can be replacesd. But Simon Bunce lost his job, his father and more when he was arrested after an ID theft used his credit card details on a child pornography website.

Simon Bunce used to be a avid internet shopper, happy to escape the crowds and have purchases delivered to his home. Wary of fly-by-night establishments, he bought only from big name retailers with uber-secure websites.

But then, four years ago, he was surprised to find himself embroiled in Operation Ore, the UK's largest ever police hunt against internet pedophiles. He was arrested on suspicion of possession of indecent images of child pornography, accused of downloading indecent images of children and conspiracy to distribute indecent images of children.

Police took from him his computer and data storage devices, flash drives, CDs and even floppy disks, and even examined his computer and storage devices that he used at work. "That was really humiliating".

The effect was devastating. When his employers became aware of the reason he had been arrested, he was immediately fired from his $200,000 a year job, and close members of his family disowned an ignored him.

"I made the mistake of telling my father, and he disowned me," Mr Bunce says. "He then told all my family and they did the same."

Suddenly humiliated and with no income, Mr Bunce had to consider selling his family home. His wife, Kim, stuck by his side throughout the horrible ordeal, and supported his mission to clear up his name.

Mr Bunce knew he was innocent - he had never downloaded indecent images, and so he knew that the police would not find any evidence on the computers or storage devices they had confiscated.

The police's computer technicians took several months to examine the confiscated devices, and Mr Bunce could not afford to wait to repair the damage done to his reputation. "I knew there'd been a horrible mistake made and so I had to investigate it myself."

Identity theft occurs when personal information is used by someone else to obtain credit, goods or other services fraudulently. Recent surveys suggest that as many as one in four people have been affected by it, more if you use the internet frequently. In 2007 more than 185,000 cases of identity theft were identified by Cifas, the UK's fraud prevention service, an increase of almost 8% on 2006.

Complete BBC story.



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