You might think it's all fun and games when you're Instagramming your dinner before you dig in, but former identity thief Nathaniel Troy Maye will tell you otherwise; doing just that got him arrested.


Nathaniel Troy Maye and Tiwanna Tenise Thomason are now facing up to 12 years in prison after a guilty plea this Friday, but just a few months ago, they were successful thieves offering sweet deals on what they claimed to be a collection of 700,000 stolen identities. A witness working undercover with the IRS had dinner with the pair, and purchased a jumpdrive said to pack 50,000 identities, and that's when the trouble all began.

On the drive (in addition to a scant 50 identities) investigators found metadata referencing one "Troy Maye." That lead them to the (now private, unfortunately) Instagram account of the same name, which featured a photo of the very meal Troy had eaten at the illicit dinner-meeting and a few selfies that the witness was able to positively identify.


The damning shot of a steak and some mac and cheese and other information gleaned from the account ultimately let investigators track down and arrest the pair, who were found with a collection of 55,000 pilfered identities. So let that be a lesson to you about Instagramming food at business meetings, especially if those meetings are illegal as hell. [South Florida Sun Sentinel via Fark]

