IP: Identity Theft -- a personal experience

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> From:
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: Identity Theft
>
> PLEASE DO NOT IDENTIFY ME IF YOU SEND THIS...
>
> Dave
>
> The following happened to a colleague. About a year
> ago he signed up for a membership at a video rental
> store.  The form had a place for social security
> number and he made the mistake of filling it in.  About
> three months later there was a message on his answerer
> from a bank with which he did not have an account
> asking about an overdraft. Upon calling he discovered
> that there was an account in his name with his ss
> number but with a different address. On calling and
> writing to the various credit bureaus, he discovered
> that there had been numerous queries about his
> creditworthiness. He then contacted each of these and
> discovered that there had been many credit cards
> issued in his name as well as a variety of wireless
> phone accounts. He called each of these in turn and
> got letters from the credit bureaus but could not be
> sure that the matter had ended.
>
> The accounts/credit cards were in states other than
> his but police in those communities were not responsive
> to complaints.  Fortunately, a friend worked in a state
> attorney general office and he made a call to a local
> official in the area where the perpetrators seemed to be
> based.  In addition, quite by accident a local house was
> raided for drugs.  Fortunately, one of the police in the
> raid remembered my colleague's name so when they discovered
> a collection of driver's licenses from a variety of states,
> as well as credit cards and other account info, in my
> colleague's name, he was able to put it all together.
> There were also cards and licenses for others.
> The perpetrators pled and got some jail time...  probably
> more because of the drugs than the identity thefts and fraud.
>
> All of this involved an incredible number of hours and
> associated aggravation to track down and fix the problem.
> And resolving it quickly depended on having a well placed
> connection and a good deal of luck.
>
> The lesson is that we are all vulnerable. Just a ss number
> is enough to get a fraud going.  AND There is no privacy
> wrt ss numbers. For example, at many universities the ss
> number is the same as the student ID...and appears on
> class rosters sent to departments and faculty.



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