Lebanon Mail Order Company Has Assets Frozen in Identity Theft Case

A Williamson County judge has frozen the assets of a mail order company based in Lebanon as part of an identity theft case.

The alleged scheme is that National Fulfillment Inc. successfully charged nearly 20-dollars to at least 30-thousand credit cards for a product that didn’t exist. The fraudulent charges totaling half-a-million dollars showed up on credit card statements between July and September of 2005 from “EmTech.”

Assistant attorney general Brant Harrell is trying the case. He says it’s the first identity theft case of its size to be tried in Tennessee since the crime was first targeted in 1999.

“Fortunately, it’s not something we see frequently. But this definitely caught our eye when we came across it. We look for systematic violations. If there are a handful of violations we’re obviously concerned about that but we have resource issues where we have to delegate resources to what we see are the bigger offenders.”

Attorneys for National Fulfillment say there was a real item, an exercise product which the company sold on behalf of a third party. They say full refunds were offered to those who requested one and that there were fewer complaints than usual about the product.

300-thousand dollars of the company’s assets will be frozen until a trial is held or a settlement is reached.