Identity Theft How to Protect Your Name (4 page)

BOOK: Identity Theft How to Protect Your Name
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mailman, garbageman; •

exterminator;


utility meter reader (gas, electricity, etc.); •

pet groomer;


tutor,
after-school teacher
(music, math, etc.);


athletic coach
, personal trainer, mas-sage therapist, etc.; and •

friends, neighbors, children’s acquaintances,
etc.

Limit the number of people who have easy assess into your home. This means keeping keys and access codes to your security alarm away from most. Keep critical documents locked up in a desk drawer. Consider purchasing a
fireproof safe
for storing this information.

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Protecting your children
from dead-beat fathers or drug-addicted mothers who have the potential to steal from you and your children is a challenge.

Over the course of three years, Florida resident Kelli Pasqualetti-Heller began to receive letters from collections agencies demanding payment for utility, phone and cable companies. A furniture company sent an overdue bill. And the IRS demanded back taxes.

But the letters weren’t addressed to her—they were addressed to her 11-year-old son who suffered from cerebral palsy. After hiring a private investigator, Pasqualetti-Heller learned that her son had had his identity stolen from his own father, who’d been using his son’s Social Security number to make purchases. The woman fought with the bill collectors to get the charges removed, then went to the police. After two years of calling, emailing and faxing, Pasqualetti-Heller heard that her ex-husband was arrested and charged with three felony counts of identity theft.

This case is proof that a thief can be in the family…and target a minor child with no credit history at the start.

W H O ’ S A T A R G E T ?

Identity theft, unlike many types of crime, affects all Americans, regardless of age, gender, nationality, race or income level. Victims include everyone from restaurant workers, telephone repair technicians and police officers, to corporate and government executives, celebrities and
high-ranking military officers
. What victims do have in common is the difficult, time consuming and potentially expensive task of repairing
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the damage that has been done to their credit, their savings and their
reputation
. Be careful about calling identity theft a “white-collar” crime. This is mislead-ing because the profiles of the thieves are as diverse as the people they victimize.

An identity thief can be a lowly store clerk, a neighborhood teen with a fancy computer or your colleague at work with too many bills to pay. But these
thieves also include organized criminal groups, street
gangs and convicted felons.

Because laws haven’t been passed quick enough to address the growing severity of the crime, the prob-ability of high financial gain versus low sentencing exposure opens the door for more thieves. And, until more uniform and severe laws emerge to catch, prosecute and punish identity thieves, the
incentives to
steal
will outweigh the risks of being caught.

An identity thief can be sophisticated in his methods, or
low tech by simply dumpster diving
to obtain someone else’s personal information. An identity thief may not even think about committing the crime until he or she comes across a misplaced purse, a dropped wallet or a stack of mail placed in the wrong mailbox. If a potential thief has access to personal information but doesn’t have the know-how to pull of a scheme, he may
sell the information
to someone who does know how to pull it off.

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With the proliferation of computers and increased
use of the Internet, many identity thieves have used
information obtained from company databases and
Web sites. A thief might access a public Web site
that contains information in the public domain that
can be used to create a false identity. He might flip
through employee files at work and get what he
needs to impersonate. She might pretend to be your
kids’ ballet instructor and take your personal information—as well as your children’s—and use them to
establish credit and a new ID.

According to the Secret Service, the method that may be most difficult to prevent is theft by a
collusive
employee
. Individuals or groups who wish to obtain personal identifiers or account information for a large-scale fraud ring will often pay or extort an employee who has access to this information through their employment at workplaces such as a financial institution, medical office or government agency.

When you think of all the people who have your personal information on file, it can be frightening. And to think of all the people who can access that information either directly or indirectly is doubly frightening. Strangers you meet in your daily transactions can be your thieves. There’s no one target.

You’re
the target
of an identity thief.

ID thieves do not discriminate. Whether you’re young,
old, rich or poor (famous or John Doe) you are at
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risk. Celebrities like Tiger Woods and Lara Flynn Boyle
have been victims. Dead people from the World Trade
Center attacks have been victims.

But there is one thing that can make you a greater target for ID theft: your name. The more common the name, the easier the target. According to the U.S.

Census Bureau:


The most
common family names
include: Smith, Johnson, Williams, Jones, Brown, Davis, Miller, Wilson, Moore and Taylor.


Most common male names: James, John, Robert, Michael, William, David, Richard, Charles, Joseph and Thomas.


Most common female names: Mary, Patricia, Linda, Barbara, Elizabeth, Jennifer, Maria, Susan, Margaret and Dor-othy.

Your
location
might elevate your risk as well, as the largest number of ID theft complaints have typically come from California, New York, Texas and Florida.

Y O U N G A N D O L D

As we’ve already seen in some cases, young children can be victimized. College students are fat targets, too.

Young people whose parents have money problems
should consider running regular credit reports and
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request that the three major credit agencies notify
them when new accounts are opened in their name.

When you arrive on a
college campus
for the first time, chances are you’ll get a dozen offers to open a line of credit with a bank. But the deluge of credit card offers coupled with
students’ carelessness
exposes college students to identity theft.

In a study for Chubb Insurance Company, Impulse Research Corp. surveyed 208 college students over the Internet and learned that
49 percent of college
students receive card applications daily or weekly
.

Some 86 percent of those surveyed said they receive card applications a few times a month. Of those surveyed, 30 percent said they trashed the applications without destroying them. Chubb also learned that 75

percent of college students are approached by representatives of card issuers who ask students to fill out applications with personal information, including Social Security numbers, in order to be considered for a card. In some instances, the application takers are not really employed by card companies, but are posing as employees to obtain information.

Nearly 30 percent of students rarely, if ever, reconcile their credit card statements.

The problem for students is that many colleges use Social Security numbers as a student’s identification number, which is required to access grades, log on to
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campus computers, gain access to dining halls and other school activities, take exams and see your test scores on a
hallway posting
.

Those same ID numbers are printed on student ID

cards. Adding to the odds against college students is their carelessness when monitoring their accounts and checking for fraudulent activity.

Some university orientation activities make it easy
for students’ personal data to fall into the wrong
hands. Various vendors use these events to push
credit card applications to new and returning students, often with bonuses like free T-shirts and other
incentives.

A university might not be so good about screening these vendors before they set themselves up and
prey
on students
. It’s possible that anyone can set up a table and look like an authentic vendor from a reputable bank. So, by filling out an application, which, in most cases, asks for your Social Security number, you could be handing valuable information to an identity-fraud operation.

At the other end of the spectrum, the
elderly are
very easy targets
for thieves. There have been many cases in which elderly people have been victimized by their caretakers. For example, a Louisiana woman used the credit card of a 90-year-old New Orleans woman under her care to illegally withdraw several thousand dollars from ATMs. The thief was eventually booked with identity theft, unauthorized use of a credit card
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I T C A N H A P P E N T O Y O U … N O M A T T E R W H O Y O U A R E

and exploitation of the infirm. She had used the elder woman’s Social Security number to obtain a personal-identification number that allowed her to make ATM

withdrawals using the woman’s credit card.

In a case under federal indictment in the Eastern District of Michigan,
United States v. Billings
, the defendants and others allegedly worked together to identify houses in the metropolitan Detroit area that were owned free and clear by elderly people. They would allegedly steal the identity of the true owner and then strip the equity out of the houses without the owner’s knowledge or consent. How did they do this? The criminals
refinanced
the property, withdrawing equity and obtaining a mortgage in the owner’s name, and then defaulted on the mortgage.

In a federal prosecution in the Eastern District of North Carolina,
United States v. Hooks
, a man stole mail from senior citizens throughout North Carolina, used the biographical information contained in the
stolen mail to produce fake drivers’ licenses
and counterfeit checks, and then used the licenses and checks to withdraw money out of their bank accounts.

To produce the licenses, the man had obtained an official North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles license machine. (He later claimed that he purchased the DMV machine on eBay.) In this case, which the United States Secret Service investigated, the loss resulting from the criminal’s conduct totaled $177,472.63. He ultimately pleaded guilty to mail theft, production of false identification documents, and use of false identification, and was sentenced on to 63

months imprisonment.

And, in another case involving the elderly,
United States
v. Robinson
, the defendant took a job as a
live-in com-3 6

C H A P T E R 2

panion
for an elderly woman. After the elderly woman was hospitalized, the defendant obtained and used credit cards in the elderly woman’s name, stealing $47,051.35. The thief pled guilty to access device fraud and production of false checks, and was sentenced to 31 months imprisonment.

Older Americans will become an increasingly attractive target by criminal elements given that 70 percent of our nation’s wealth is controlled by those 50

years of age and older.

Often, the level of diligence in monitoring personal finances decreases among the elderly or, after discovering the fraudulent activity, some are embarrassed and unsure of the steps necessary to report the compromise.

Criminals do not steal the identities of the elderly so they can pretend to be old and wise. They do it because senior citizens are more likely than most of us to have
significant assets
—savings, investments, paid-up mortgages, good credit and Federal entitlement checks. Some senior citizens are easier and safer to rob because they are less sure of themselves, more trusting and less aware of simple precautions. They may be less likely to review their monthly financial statements. They may hesitate to take action if they do find something wrong because they are afraid a relative is responsible for robbing them, or because they are afraid they will make their families feel they can no longer be trusted to live independently.

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Remember: Identity theft is an “enabling” crime,
one that permits criminals to commit other crimes
more effectively. Those crimes may range from passing bad checks and defrauding credit card companies to horrific acts of terrorism.

A M A N I N P H O E N I X

Preying on the alone and elderly is often a
tactic of
telemarketers
. When you’re old and lonely, you don’t mind answering the phone to chatty marketers who’ll pay attention to what you have to say. But when a telemarketer mixes marketing with thievery, it’s particularly sad. That’s what happened in Phoenix, Arizona, where a man purposely engaged in telemarketing activities and targeting individuals who hoped for something that would give them a better life.

The man’s scheme generally involved an amount of money less than $500, which made the victim less likely to pursue legal action. He would send correspondence to these seniors bearing the words “Social Security Administration” and the
official SSA seal
, advising them they had been approved to receive an additional SSA benefit check, but they would have to pay a “processing fee” ranging from $9 to $99. In some cases, he requested banking information in order to process the fee, and after receiving that information, he withdrew money directly from their checking accounts.

BOOK: Identity Theft How to Protect Your Name
9.04Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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