It is clear that economic worries are in the minds of ID thieves,  US federal authorities this week announced a series of arrests and convictions in connection with a global identity theft ring that stole millions of dollars by hijacking lines of credit.

State and federal law enforcement officials arrested four men who were part of a group that allegedly combined high-tech gear with old-fashioned con-artistry to drain home-equity lines. Police said that the men and four others arrested earlier this year tricked multiple banks and credit unions into wiring more than $2.5 million from home-equity lines to accounts controlled by members of a fraud ring in Canada, China, Japan, Vietnam and South Korea.

The FBI said that it is scheme afflicting the struggling real estate and mortgage market. In such crimes, thieves target people with good credit and large, untapped home-equity lines of credit, digging through public records. The group also used other online database to locate answers to common security questions, such as the victim's mother's maiden name, and used the combined information to order credit reports in the victim's name to verify account balances.

They would then phone the victim's bank or credit union and ask it to wire a substantial portion of the line of credit to banks in Asia and Canada.

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