WNT: Grappling with Identity Theft

W A S H I N G T O N, Dec. 6, 2000 -- Maureen won’t let us tell you her last name or even where she lives. She is very cautious.

She and her husband had their identities stolen after someone got her husband’s social security number. That’s all it took.

A Long Trail of Fraud

In September of last year, she got a call from her MasterCard service provider about unusual activity on her account. She canceled her card and wasn’t charged for the purchases. Although she filled out a police report, no one told her to put a fraud alert on her credit reports.

“I was naïve then,” Maureen says. “But now I have a Ph.D. in the school of hard knocks in identity theft.”

Two months later, J.C. Penny’s credit department in New Mexico called. A man using her husband’s social security number had opened a charge account with a nonexistent address. After a few phone calls, Maureen discovered that 25 inquires had been made on their account in the past two months and six address changes filed.

A few days after that, she was contacted by three different Chicago-area banks. They told her that in a period of two hours, a man posing as her husband had requested a total of $45,000 in loans. When the man returned to one of the banks to pick up his loan, detectives arrested him in the parking lot. The man pleaded guilty and was recently sentenced to three years in prison, the maximum amount for a non-violent financial crime.

All told, about a half dozen people attempted to buy $150,000 worth of goods and merchandise using their credit, including two vehicles, a Lincoln Navigator and a Ford Expedition. Even now, Maureen and her husband have no idea how his social security number was stolen in the first place.

And then there’s Jessica, another identity theft victim who suffered a different fate than Maureen. She spent a night in jail after a friend stole her identity.

“This woman has committed several different crimes in my name,” Jessica says, “assault and battery, petty theft, marijuana, not to mention the stuff I don’t even know about.”

Internet Makes Consumers Vulnerable

Stealing a person’s identity used to involve lifting a wallet or combing through garbage for personal information. That still happens, but increasingly, crooks can find all they need to know about you on the Internet.

“There is probably no time in recent history where the consumer is more vulnerable than they are on the Internet right now,” Douglas Coombs, deputy special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s Financial Crimes Unit.

This year alone, identity theft has gone up 40 percent. There are no accurate numbers on how many people are victimized, but 1,000 people a week call an I.D. theft hotline set up by the Federal Trade Commission. More than half of the complaints they receive involve credit card fraud, and about a quarter involve activation of telephone, cellular or other utility service in their name.

For victims, trying to restore their good name can often be a nightmare.

“We’ve had to submit notarized affidavits,” says Maureen. “We’ve had to submit handwriting samples. We’ve had to submit photo I.D. We’ve had to prove who we are and where we live over and over again…The victim is the one who does all the legwork.”

And in addition to taking time off to go to court, Jessica has spent $4,000 over three years in her identity theft battle.

Government Intervention

The FTC wants the credit industry to make things easier for victims by requiring a standardized form — now, victims must fill out a different form for every creditor — and wants a single phone call that puts a fraud alert on all accounts.

“We agree if there is a way for us to do this in a safe and sound way, we ought to be able to help the consumers more quickly,” says Stuart Pratt, vice president of government affairs at the Association of Credit Bureaus.

But for now, those who have been victims advise: Shred documents with your personal information and jealously guard your social security number.