Ambler Gazette > News
By Linda Finarelli
Staff Writer
It’s no secret that identity theft has been on the rise in recent years, and while it’s difficult to investigate, law enforcement authorities catch some of the thieves and are looking at ways to combine resources to increase their success rate.
The best deterrent, authorities say, is for people to guard their personal information to keep from becoming victims.
“There’s been an increase in overall fraud in the last couple years,” said Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Tony Gil, who heads up the insurance fraud and arson unit and previously prosecuted economic crimes for three years. “It’s a lot of work to get to the bottom of identity theft … [determining] how the crime was committed and who did it takes an incredible amount of work. Generally the police in Montgomery County do a great job doing that.”
ID theft often involves fraudulently using someone’s credit card information to make purchases, using someone’s personal information to open credit accounts and various schemes, usually over the Internet, to obtain money.
In 2009, Upper Dublin police had 48 identity theft cases assigned to a detective, with probably at least the same number — those with no clues at all — not assigned, Detective Sgt. Mike Byrne said. A third of the assigned were solved.
Four were solved by an arrest and 12 were “exceptionally cleared — we know who did it but the case may have been turned over to [federal authorities] or prosecuted by another agency,” he said.
Identity theft is a federal crime and if it’s carried out interstate, “the feds get involved,” he said. Detectives may be able to track an IP address, but if the crime is interstate or international in scope, “we don’t have the resources to follow up on that,” he said.
In early September, an Upper Dublin woman was victimized by someone who accessed her hotmail account and sent an e-mail to her 600 contacts saying she was in London, had been robbed and needed money to settle a hotel bill, according to a police report. The woman was alerted to the scam when she started getting calls Sept. 2 from family and friends asking if she was OK, police said.
One of the victim’s contacts, in Chicago, wired $2,000 to Manchester, England, via Western Union, Byrne said. The victim contacted Chicago police, who contacted Manchester, England.
There’s not much local police can do in such instances; the FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspector get involved in those types of investigations, he said.
According to an FBI report, its Internet Crime Complaint Center received 336,655 complaints in 2009, a 22.3 percent increase over 2008. Among the top five complaints were e-mails claiming to be from the FBI asking for money or personal information.
The others — common themes reported to local police as well, include: non-delivered merchandise or non-payment — either a seller didn’t ship a promised item or a buyer didn’t pay for an item; advance fee fraud — the victim is asked for money upfront for goods or services that never materialize; identity theft — the theft or attempted theft of some kind of identity information; and overpayment fraud — a person sends someone selling an item a check or money order (that turns out to be fraudulent) for a greater amount than the price of the item and asks the seller to deposit the payment, deduct the actual price and return the difference.
How thieves steal an identity
• Dumpster diving: rummaging through trash to get personal information from bills or other papers.
• Skimming: stealing credit/debit card numbers by using a special storage device when processing a card.
• Phishing: Pretending to be a financial institution or company and sending spam or pop-up messages to get personal information.
• Changing your address: diverting billing statements to another location by completing a change of address form.
• Old-fashioned theft: stealing wallets and purses; mail, including bank and credit card statements; preapproved credit offers; new checks or tax information. Stealing personnel records or bribing employees with access to them.
• Pretexting: Using false pretenses to obtain personal information from financial institutions, telephone companies and other sources.
A couple of years ago a middle manager at Prudential was stealing personal information on customers in the company’s computer system, resulting in victims of identity theft all over the country, Byrne recalled. Through a joint investigation by Prudential security and the Upper Dublin and Montgomery township police the thief was identified and arrested and subsequently prosecuted by a federal agency.
According to Gil, there’s been “an uptick in schemes” involving counterfeit credit cards. A group of people are going to the mall and working in groups of four and they have multiple credit cards with real credit card numbers and fictitious names. “They’re stealing the numbers off the Internet or some other source,” he said.
Many of the counterfeit credit cards look almost identical to the actual credit card for a particular store or credit card issuer, Gil said. “It’s been going on, on and off, for years. Lately we’ve seen it usually in groups from out of town.”
Protecting yourself
Federal, state and local law enforcement authorities offer a number of tips on how to prevent becoming a victim of identity theft. Among them are:
• Carry credit cards, Social Security card, passport and birth certificate in your wallet or purse ONLY when needed.
• Monitor monthly credit card statements and order a credit report yearly to check for inaccuracies and fraudulent use of account. To obtain a credit report — provided free once a year — from each of the three national credit bureaus call 1-877-322-8228 or go to www.annualcreditreport.com.
• Report lost or stolen credit cards to the issuer immediately; sign new credit cards — before someone else does.
• Check expiration dates on credit cards and contact the issuer if you don’t get a replacement before they expire. Do the same for monthly financial statements and bills.
• Never give out credit card or bank account numbers over the phone, through the mail or over the Internet unless you’re sure who you are dealing with, and, if using the Internet, know the website is secure. A secure or “encrypted” transaction will have two features: an icon of a lock appearing in the bottom strip of the Web browser page, and the URL address for the Web page will change from “http;” to “https” for the page on which you input the personal data.
• When ordering new checks, do not provide information such as Social Security number, telephone number or driver’s license number on them.
• Never leave receipts behind — at ATMs, on counters at financial institutions, or at gasoline pumps. Keep the receipts and shred when you are done with them.
• Match credit card receipts against monthly bills and check financial statements for accuracy.
• Keep items with personal information in a safe place. Shred charge receipts, copies of credit applications, insurance forms, bank checks and financial statements that are being discarded, as well as expired charge cards and credit offers received in the mail.
• Add passwords to credit card, bank and other accounts and avoid using easily available information, such as mother’s maiden name, your birth date, phone number, last four digits of Social Security number or a series of consecutive numbers. Memorize the passwords; don’t carry them in your wallet.
• Put outgoing mail, especially bill payments, at a post office or blue U.S. Postal Service collection box or give directly to your mail carrier.
• Be conscious of mail or telephone solicitations disguised as promotions that offer instant prizes or awards designed solely to obtain personal information or credit card numbers.
• Watch out for e-mails that appear to be official messages from banks or merchants asking you to update or verify account or billing information. While they may contain realistic logos of banks, online retailers or credit card companies, they are attempts to get recipients to divulge personal financial data.
Gil said his advice is to “make sure you’re current with anti-virus software” when doing anything online. Most importantly, “keep your Social Security card in a safe place — it’s the most dangerous piece of information to lose.”
In one case he prosecuted a woman used someone’s Social Security number to get neonatal care, with the insurance company being the victim.
Another time he prosecuted a case in which a bank employee stole someone’s identity, Gil said, adding, “sometimes you can’t control it.”
People should make sure they check their credit report for strange charges or accounts they did not open, he said.
What to do if you are a victim
Take the following steps as soon as possible and keep a record with details of conversations and copies of all correspondence.
• Call the toll-free fraud number of any one of the three consumer reporting companies to place a fraud alert on your credit report: TransUnion, 1-800-680-7289, www.transunion.com; Equifax, 1-800-525-6285, www.equifax.com; Experian, 1-888-397-3742, www.experian.com. The company you call is required to contact the other two, which will place an alert on your credit report.
• File a report with local police and obtain an identity theft report.
• Close accounts you know, or believe, were tampered with or opened fraudulently. Call and speak with someone in the security or fraud department and follow up in writing, using certified mail. Ask for forms to dispute any charges or debits to your accounts or fraudulently opened accounts.
• If the crime involved the U.S. Mail, report it online to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service at http://postalinspectors.uspis.gov.
• If the crime involved counterfeit credit cards or computer hacking, report it to the U.S. Secret Service.
• Report the ID theft online with the Federal Trade commission at www.consumer.gov/idtheft or call 1-877-IDTHEFT. The FTC has counselors to help resolve financial and other problems that can result from ID theft.
“It’s such a big problem, everybody will be a victim eventually, if they haven’t already,” Byrne said. “The Internet makes it easy to do long distance; it’s extremely difficult to investigate successfully. If people would just stop and think before they wire money through Western Union to someone they never met …”
Recalling a case several years ago of a Bucks County prisoner who obtained personal information through fraudulent calls to hospitals and was eventually caught and prosecuted, he said, “They have all day. We’re always playing catch-up to try to figure out their schemes.”
For more information on ID theft, contact:
U.S. Postal Inspection Service
Federal Trade Commission
U.S. Secret Service
Department of Justice
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
The best deterrent, authorities say, is for people to guard their personal information to keep from becoming victims.
“There’s been an increase in overall fraud in the last couple years,” said Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Tony Gil, who heads up the insurance fraud and arson unit and previously prosecuted economic crimes for three years. “It’s a lot of work to get to the bottom of identity theft … [determining] how the crime was committed and who did it takes an incredible amount of work. Generally the police in Montgomery County do a great job doing that.”
ID theft often involves fraudulently using someone’s credit card information to make purchases, using someone’s personal information to open credit accounts and various schemes, usually over the Internet, to obtain money.
In 2009, Upper Dublin police had 48 identity theft cases assigned to a detective, with probably at least the same number — those with no clues at all — not assigned, Detective Sgt. Mike Byrne said. A third of the assigned were solved.
Four were solved by an arrest and 12 were “exceptionally cleared — we know who did it but the case may have been turned over to [federal authorities] or prosecuted by another agency,” he said.
Identity theft is a federal crime and if it’s carried out interstate, “the feds get involved,” he said. Detectives may be able to track an IP address, but if the crime is interstate or international in scope, “we don’t have the resources to follow up on that,” he said.
In early September, an Upper Dublin woman was victimized by someone who accessed her hotmail account and sent an e-mail to her 600 contacts saying she was in London, had been robbed and needed money to settle a hotel bill, according to a police report. The woman was alerted to the scam when she started getting calls Sept. 2 from family and friends asking if she was OK, police said.
One of the victim’s contacts, in Chicago, wired $2,000 to Manchester, England, via Western Union, Byrne said. The victim contacted Chicago police, who contacted Manchester, England.
There’s not much local police can do in such instances; the FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspector get involved in those types of investigations, he said.
According to an FBI report, its Internet Crime Complaint Center received 336,655 complaints in 2009, a 22.3 percent increase over 2008. Among the top five complaints were e-mails claiming to be from the FBI asking for money or personal information.
The others — common themes reported to local police as well, include: non-delivered merchandise or non-payment — either a seller didn’t ship a promised item or a buyer didn’t pay for an item; advance fee fraud — the victim is asked for money upfront for goods or services that never materialize; identity theft — the theft or attempted theft of some kind of identity information; and overpayment fraud — a person sends someone selling an item a check or money order (that turns out to be fraudulent) for a greater amount than the price of the item and asks the seller to deposit the payment, deduct the actual price and return the difference.
How thieves steal an identity
• Dumpster diving: rummaging through trash to get personal information from bills or other papers.
• Skimming: stealing credit/debit card numbers by using a special storage device when processing a card.
• Phishing: Pretending to be a financial institution or company and sending spam or pop-up messages to get personal information.
• Changing your address: diverting billing statements to another location by completing a change of address form.
• Old-fashioned theft: stealing wallets and purses; mail, including bank and credit card statements; preapproved credit offers; new checks or tax information. Stealing personnel records or bribing employees with access to them.
• Pretexting: Using false pretenses to obtain personal information from financial institutions, telephone companies and other sources.
A couple of years ago a middle manager at Prudential was stealing personal information on customers in the company’s computer system, resulting in victims of identity theft all over the country, Byrne recalled. Through a joint investigation by Prudential security and the Upper Dublin and Montgomery township police the thief was identified and arrested and subsequently prosecuted by a federal agency.
According to Gil, there’s been “an uptick in schemes” involving counterfeit credit cards. A group of people are going to the mall and working in groups of four and they have multiple credit cards with real credit card numbers and fictitious names. “They’re stealing the numbers off the Internet or some other source,” he said.
Many of the counterfeit credit cards look almost identical to the actual credit card for a particular store or credit card issuer, Gil said. “It’s been going on, on and off, for years. Lately we’ve seen it usually in groups from out of town.”
Protecting yourself
Federal, state and local law enforcement authorities offer a number of tips on how to prevent becoming a victim of identity theft. Among them are:
• Carry credit cards, Social Security card, passport and birth certificate in your wallet or purse ONLY when needed.
• Monitor monthly credit card statements and order a credit report yearly to check for inaccuracies and fraudulent use of account. To obtain a credit report — provided free once a year — from each of the three national credit bureaus call 1-877-322-8228 or go to www.annualcreditreport.com.
• Report lost or stolen credit cards to the issuer immediately; sign new credit cards — before someone else does.
• Check expiration dates on credit cards and contact the issuer if you don’t get a replacement before they expire. Do the same for monthly financial statements and bills.
• Never give out credit card or bank account numbers over the phone, through the mail or over the Internet unless you’re sure who you are dealing with, and, if using the Internet, know the website is secure. A secure or “encrypted” transaction will have two features: an icon of a lock appearing in the bottom strip of the Web browser page, and the URL address for the Web page will change from “http;” to “https” for the page on which you input the personal data.
• When ordering new checks, do not provide information such as Social Security number, telephone number or driver’s license number on them.
• Never leave receipts behind — at ATMs, on counters at financial institutions, or at gasoline pumps. Keep the receipts and shred when you are done with them.
• Match credit card receipts against monthly bills and check financial statements for accuracy.
• Keep items with personal information in a safe place. Shred charge receipts, copies of credit applications, insurance forms, bank checks and financial statements that are being discarded, as well as expired charge cards and credit offers received in the mail.
• Add passwords to credit card, bank and other accounts and avoid using easily available information, such as mother’s maiden name, your birth date, phone number, last four digits of Social Security number or a series of consecutive numbers. Memorize the passwords; don’t carry them in your wallet.
• Put outgoing mail, especially bill payments, at a post office or blue U.S. Postal Service collection box or give directly to your mail carrier.
• Be conscious of mail or telephone solicitations disguised as promotions that offer instant prizes or awards designed solely to obtain personal information or credit card numbers.
• Watch out for e-mails that appear to be official messages from banks or merchants asking you to update or verify account or billing information. While they may contain realistic logos of banks, online retailers or credit card companies, they are attempts to get recipients to divulge personal financial data.
Gil said his advice is to “make sure you’re current with anti-virus software” when doing anything online. Most importantly, “keep your Social Security card in a safe place — it’s the most dangerous piece of information to lose.”
In one case he prosecuted a woman used someone’s Social Security number to get neonatal care, with the insurance company being the victim.
Another time he prosecuted a case in which a bank employee stole someone’s identity, Gil said, adding, “sometimes you can’t control it.”
People should make sure they check their credit report for strange charges or accounts they did not open, he said.
What to do if you are a victim
Take the following steps as soon as possible and keep a record with details of conversations and copies of all correspondence.
• Call the toll-free fraud number of any one of the three consumer reporting companies to place a fraud alert on your credit report: TransUnion, 1-800-680-7289, www.transunion.com; Equifax, 1-800-525-6285, www.equifax.com; Experian, 1-888-397-3742, www.experian.com. The company you call is required to contact the other two, which will place an alert on your credit report.
• File a report with local police and obtain an identity theft report.
• Close accounts you know, or believe, were tampered with or opened fraudulently. Call and speak with someone in the security or fraud department and follow up in writing, using certified mail. Ask for forms to dispute any charges or debits to your accounts or fraudulently opened accounts.
• If the crime involved the U.S. Mail, report it online to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service at http://postalinspectors.uspis.gov.
• If the crime involved counterfeit credit cards or computer hacking, report it to the U.S. Secret Service.
• Report the ID theft online with the Federal Trade commission at www.consumer.gov/idtheft or call 1-877-IDTHEFT. The FTC has counselors to help resolve financial and other problems that can result from ID theft.
“It’s such a big problem, everybody will be a victim eventually, if they haven’t already,” Byrne said. “The Internet makes it easy to do long distance; it’s extremely difficult to investigate successfully. If people would just stop and think before they wire money through Western Union to someone they never met …”
Recalling a case several years ago of a Bucks County prisoner who obtained personal information through fraudulent calls to hospitals and was eventually caught and prosecuted, he said, “They have all day. We’re always playing catch-up to try to figure out their schemes.”
For more information on ID theft, contact:
U.S. Postal Inspection Service
Federal Trade Commission
U.S. Secret Service
Department of Justice
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
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