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Kaua‘i threat: ID theft
By Pamela V. Brown - Special to The
Garden Island
Posted: Friday, Sep 10, 2004 - 04:24:07 am
HST
Elizabeth Freitas is living proof that
identity theft is alive and well and on Kaua‘i and can happen
to even the most cautious person. On New Year's Eve day last
year, Freitas discovered that someone had stolen a check from
her Lihue home, wrote it to cash, forged her name on it as the
signer and helped himself to $900 from her bank
account.
The check was originally mailed to her with a
pre-activated - and unrequested - credit card, that Freitas
had cancelled immediately upon receipt. Normally she or her
husband, former Kaua‘i police chief George Freitas, would have
ripped such checks to shreds but this one apparently slipped
through the cracks and was likely taken from their garbage.
"It makes you
realize how easy it is," said George Freitas. "It occurred so
easily. In no time, someone has $900 of your money. It's going
to make me a little more paranoid. Junk mail will get torn
into a million pieces before it leaves my hands from now
on."
Elizabeth Freitas, herself a retired police
officer after 13 years on the force in Richmond, California,
is thankful that the perpetrator wasn't the brightest bulb in
the box. Though he'd written the check payable to cash, he
endorsed it on the back using his real name and deposited it
into his own account at the bank.
The Freitases were
lucky their loss was so easy to define. Most victims of
identity theft suffer far worse consequences, in part because
the crime is much more insidious, easier to perpetrate and
harder to detect until long after the damage has been done,
than most people realize.
Perfect
Crime
Classic identity theft involves stealing a
pre-approved credit card offer that has been discarded by the
intended recipient. The thief activates the credit card. Then
- this is the key point that sets ID theft apart from a
straightforward theft - changes the mailing address on the
account.
With his new identity and brand new credit
limit, an ID thief can begin opening new accounts at will and
spending freely - but certainly not paying the bills - while
the victim remains unaware for months because the bills are
going somewhere else, as are all the reminder and dunning
notices.
Even the most diligent consumer who scours
their credit card bills monthly looking for fraudulent
purchases won't suspect a thing because no evidence comes to
them.
"To me it's the perfect crime," said Mel Rapozo,
Kauai county councilman and co-owner of M & P Legal
Support Services, a private investigative agency. "You'd never
know (you are a victim) until you go to apply for credit. When
they run your credit, all of a sudden you have all of these
outstanding credit accounts. And then the fun
begins."
Rapozo, who gives lively and informative
seminars around the island about ID theft, said that
pre-approved credit card offers aren't the only ammunition for
ID thieves. Something as seemingly innocuous as a cable
television or water bill in the wrong hands can lead to
trouble.
"Certain applications require a utility bill
to prove proof of residence," he said. "So they can use that
to set up new accounts."
Stories abound of victims
being unable to open new accounts, purchase cars or qualify
for mortgages because of an identify thief's activities
undertaken in their name. When the victim discovers the
deception, it feels like the harshest slap in the
face.
"Most people don't know they're a victim, that's
the problem," Rapozo said, noting that older folks who don't
often apply for new credit or refinance their homes could go
many months before finding out what's happening in their
names.
"For example, the crook gets a traffic ticket
(in the victim's name) . . . doesn't show up for court, so a
bench warrant is issued," and an officer shows up at the
unsuspecting victim's house to make the
arrest.
Stolen From Mailbox
The trouble
caused by a malicious stranger perpetrating ID theft costs on
average $1,500 for out-of-pocket expenses and 175 hours to
clean up, Rapozo said. The Federal Trade Commission estimates
that one in eight adults in America have had their identities
stolen - 27 million people in the past five years. At a rate
of one new victim somewhere in the United States every 20-25
seconds, the FTC, calls ID theft the fastest growing high tech
crime in the country.
But the scary part is that it's
not really all that high tech. Thieves find personal
information in easily accessible locations that most trusting,
law-abiding people wouldn't even think of protecting: trash
cans at home or at the post office and frequently from
residential mailboxes.
Mike Hough's identity theft
nightmare began in textbook fashion - with theft of his
incoming mail from his curbside mailbox outside his Wailua
home during January 2003. "We'd had some occurrences of people
hitting mailboxes with baseball bats (in the neighborhood) so
we figured it was some idiot," he said, explaining that he
didn't begin to suspect that any of his mail had been stolen
until he began receiving excessive charges on his credit
card.
Hough was fortunate that his thieves weren't
clever enough to change his mailing address so he was able to
discover the theft relatively quickly. Nevertheless, he was
required to pay the charges on his credit card
bills.
After many hours on the phone gathering proof
that he had not ordered nor received the items for which he
was being charged, had to wait between 60 and 90 days to
receive the appropriate credits back from his financial
institutions.
Ironically, the day after contacting the
post office about his mail theft, Hough received a flyer from
the postal service recommending that residential customers
install locking mailboxes to prevent just such an incident. In
early 2003, Hough said, it was impossible to find a locking
mailbox for purchase on Kauai and even more difficult to make
sure that whatever he bought via the internet would conform to
U.S. Postal Service regulations.
Earlier this year,
Kapaa post office personnel removed rubbish cans from the
lobby and posted notices warning customers of mail theft from
the office. Few patrons heeded the warnings as evidenced by
the daily piles of unwanted mail on the counter and strewn on
the floor. Apparently giving up trying to protect people from
themselves, the post office recently reinstalled the rubbish
cans in the lobby.
"People go in the trash cans (and
take mail)," said Steve, a Kapa‘a post office employee who
would not give his last name. Even though Kaua‘i people may
believe that mail theft only happens on the Mainland, "It's no
difference here," he said.
That reality leaves Hough
feeling disconcerted and "anger that people were purchasing
things off our back instead of getting a job," he said. "And a
little bit of sadness that the crime wave across the country
has reached this little enclave."
Private investigator
Rapozo said the only thing people can do is to protect
themselves. "You just gotta be careful and assume that
anything you send out can be seen by other people," he said.
"It's just a pain in the okole."
Look for Part 2 of
this article in Saturday's issue of The Garden
Island
What to do if you believe you are a
victim of identity theft:
- Contact all creditors by phone and in writing.
- Close out any accounts you believe have been tampered
with and re-open the accounts with new PIN numbers.
- Call the Kaua‘i Police Department: 241-1711.
- Call the Social Security Administration Fraud Hotline:
800-268-0271.
- Call the Postal Inspection Service office:
808-423-3790.
- Call the Federal Trade Commission to report the
incident: 1-877-IDTHEFT.
- Contact the Department of Motor Vehicles to see if
another drivers license was issued in your name. If so,
request a new license number and request a form to begin
that office's fraud investigation process.
- Contact the fraud departments of each of the three major
credit bureaus and request that a "Fraud Alert/Victim
Impact" statement be placed in your file.
- Order copies of your credit reports and review them
thoroughly:
Equifax P.O. Box 105873 Atlanta, GA
30348-5873 Telephone: 1-888-766-0008
Experian
Information Systems (formerly TRW) P.O. Box 949 Allen, TX
75013-0949 Telephone: 1-888-397-3742
TransUnion P.O.
Box 390 Springfield, PA 19064-0390 Telephone:
1-800-680-7289
- Keep a log of all your contacts and make copies of all
documents.
- Information provided by Mel Rapozo, co-owner of M&P
Legal Support Services, and the U.S. Postal Inspection
Service.
For more information go to: http://www.usps.gov/postalinspectors
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