2015/03/26

Ars Technica March 25, 2015: Florida man, initially thought dead, arrested after facial recognition match

A Florida businessman accused of falsifying his death overseas was located and then arrested by federal authorities after facial recognition software returned a match to his face in passport records. Jose Salvador Lantigua now faces one federal count of providing a false statement on a passport application.

The arrest marks yet another concrete example of a federal agency using new facial recognition technology to catch criminals.

Lantigua also faces state charges of insurance fraud in Florida, according to the Florida Times Union. The Washington Post reported that Lantigua’s family attempted to collect life insurance money as a result of his death, but the insurance company refused to pay out. Venezuelan authorities had declared Lantigua dead as of April 2013.

On Monday, Jeffrey Kraus, a special agent of the United States Department of State Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), wrote in an affidavit to a federal judge in North Carolina that Lantigua had been passing himself off as Ernest Allen Wills. Lantigua applied for a United States passport in Wills’ name in November 2014. As part of a routine background check, the Charleston Passport Center ran the photograph of "Wills" through its database and found Lantigua’s original passport photo. One obvious difference is that Wills is African-American while Lantigua is white. more