UK business registry says “yes, chef” to hundreds of cloned IDs and restaurants

Take a bunch of celebrity chefs; add biometric technology, bad intentions, a handful of bank accounts, a tablespoon of misspellings and a healthy sprinkling of lax verification safeguards. This is apparently the recipe for an identity cloning scam that has hit high profile chefs in the UK, which the BBC says has enabled fraudsters to siphon money from fake loans and other sources.

Celebrated gourmets Heston Blumenthal and Yotam Ottolenghi are among those who had identities stolen or cloned for …

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