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No Justice For Victims of Identity Theft
chicksdaddy writes: The Christian Science Monitor's Passcode features a harrowing account of one individual's experience of identity theft. CSM reporter Sara Sorcher recounts the story of "Jonathan Franklin" (not his real name) a New Jersey business executive who woke up to find thieves had stolen his identity and racked up $30,000 in a shopping spree at luxury stores including Versace and the Apple Store. The thieves even went so far as to use personal info stolen from Franklin to have the phone company redirect calls to his home number, which meant that calls from the credit card company about the unusual spending went unanswered. Despite the heinousness of the crime and the financial cost, Sorcher notes that credit card companies and merchants both look on this kind of theft as a "victimless crime" and are more interested in getting reimbursed for their losses than trying to pursue the thieves. Police departments, also, are unable to investigate these crimes, lacking both the technical expertise and resources to do so. Franklin notes that he wasn't even required to file a police report to get reimbursed for the crime: "'As long as their loss is covered they move on to [handling] tomorrow's fraud,' Franklin observes. And that makes it harder for victims like Franklin to move on, 'In some way, I'm seeking some sense of justice,' Franklin said. 'But it's likely not going to happen.'"
I'd love to know if you could be charged with suicide if you kill somebody who has stolen your identity.
Anybody know?
So he was already reimbursed, and is now trying to "Move on"? I don't understand.
The amount only came to a few thousand dollars and it was done with a series of fake checks that the thieves printed up themselves and passed off at stores that were known at the time not to use any kind of check verification system but it still screwed my life up for months and even then nobody was really interested in catching the people who did it. The stores had pictures of them and everything but didn't pursue it (to my knowledge). My bank only wanted to get me to sign statements that I hadn't done it and they reimbursed my account all the money that had been taken.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Somebody stole my credit card details, almost certainly when I was visiting Cyprus, and then made several eBay purchases for in total £1700. I eventually got my money back from the credit card company, but eBay were not interested at all. One person there that I spoke to on the phone accepted that these transactions were all fraudulent and that this was a well-known type of scam, but subsequent contacts there made it clear that they were not at all interested in pursuing the fraudster. I guess £1700 is small beer to them.
I tried to report it to the ActionFraud system, run by the City of London Police Fraud Squad, but as soon as you admit that the bank refunded all your money they refuse even to issue a crime reference number. I was out of pocket over the number of phone calls I had to make, and letters to write to deny these purchases in writing, which I could not recover. The main loss, of course, was the time it took. But my case is almost certainly not reflected in any crime statistics.
That you have an identity to steal. Our society needs to be a "lender beware" society more than relying on individuals to protect that which isn't in their power (nor the government's power) to protect. An "identity" isn't non-abstract enough to have legal meaning. I owe you money? Prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. (something they don't have to do today) Force lenders and credit card companies to take ownership of the issue, not individuals.
The world at large should consider it mostly not your problem when someone opens a credit card account in your name. It should be as simple as saying "Nope, not me!", and it's actually the credit card company that has been defrauded, not you. That's why I really hate the term identity theft. I had that happen to me, and my identity wasn't stolen. I still had it. My credit card company was defrauded to the tune of a couple thousand dollars, but I was mildly annoyed and had to spend a few minutes confirming that a few purchases weren't made by me.
I think it should still be considered a criminal act, and obviously things like changing your medical record or arrest record can have very serious consequences, but it's a positive that creditors understand that when this happens, THEY have a problem. I much prefer that to them coming after me and trying to stick me with the consequences of their lax security.
Identity theft is bad and all, but did "James Franklin" even consider what impact he might be having on James Franklin by co-opting his identity for this story?!?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Which basically says "as long as we get our money back we don't give a fuck what happens to you".
Which tells me they should be sharing some liability or they'll just keep being greedy bastards.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The real victims are the merchants who end up paying for this fraud- not the card holders. Is payment card fraud inconvenient to card holders? Sure. However you ultimately get to walk away having lost nothing. Banks, merchant card processing intermediaries, and the card payment networks (Visa, Master Card, American Express, Discover, etc) are the problem. I'm disgusted by this attitude of blaming merchants for there lack of security when its often not possible for a merchant to properly secure things sufficiently in the first place.
The solution to this problem is for the industry to design a device which stores your private key and for which your bank has the public key. When you want to buy something your device aught to securely send a message to the merchant. That message should contain a message for the customers bank to release the funds to the merchant. Once thats done there is no risk to the merchant and no risk to the consumer.
Visa, Master Card, and even the banks make money off this fraud though so they won't fix the problem. The merchants are largely helpless to implement a system that protects them. This is why you'll find merchants refusing to do business with you under certain circumstances. Online for example one of the reasons many people can't buy something from another country is because merchants have no means of properly and sanely ensuring that the transaction is legitimate and won't be charged back. Because if it is charged back they'll lose automatically.
I actually got an email today from an advocacy organization for credit unions that claimed the merchants were the fault for insecure networks. It totally disgusted me as a small business owner whose had to take significantly greater steps to avoid fraud and even with these steps taken (pissing off customers who just don't get it) we still get charge backs on orders that never shipped and for which the payments were NEVER captured. There is no way to protect ourselves from $40-50 charges from fraudsters.
Being them is enough punishment.
Specifically, we need the right to - at our option, not the government - go into the social security office and say "my identity was stolen, take my picture, DNA and finger prints, give me a picture ID social security card".
Once you have a VSS#, no one is allowed to open an account under that VSS# unless they do so in person, so the account opener can see the photo and/or finger prints match what the SSA have on file.
Obviously, this must be at the citizen's option, not the governments.
Such a system would put a hard wall up protecting victims of identity theft from further exploitation.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
... no you didn't
Everyone should lock their credit reports, stealing an identity with them open is took easy! Only open when you need to.
My sister rented her summer cabin to the Bakers. They found some personal info like a check and ran up bills, thousands of dollars. Kris is smart, she got the police involved They went to jail.
It should probably be pointed out that police aren't in the business of solving crime. Take a look at Clearance Rate.
http://www.statista.com/statis...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
In particular a choice quote from an NPR story:
----
"In the '60s and '70s, no one thought that the police should be held responsible for how much crime there was," Wellford says. Back then, he adds, police focused on calls for service and solving crimes.
In more recent years, he says, police have been pushed to focus more on prevention, which has taken precedence over solving crimes — especially non-violent offenses.
In short, the falling crime rate we've enjoyed may come at a cost: police indifference when you report your stereo was stolen.
----
If it's not the police's job to solve crime, then whose job is it? Apparently it's the victim's job.
Joseph Elwell.
Imagine how (the real) Jonathan Franklin feels. His identity just got stolen for use in a story about identity theft.
"Oh no... he found the
Police forces don't know how to investigate this sort of thing?? I thought they were buddy-buddy with the FBI and NSA, and had access to whatever data they could possibly need. What crimes are they fighting with all our tracking data anyway???
Good luck to you when they go ahead and sell your debt to a collections agency even AFTER writing it off as a loss. They may waive the bill from your perspective but the debt doesn't go away. Once the collections agencies come after you they won't leave you alone until you show them that police report. Oh and guess what, a record was never made when they waived the debt for you so you're all on your own now.
It may be different with a credit card company, but that's exactly what happened to me with T-Mobile AND Sprint. (Yeah, yeah... fool me twice...)
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
The companies are hedged, I bet. Insured. I bet no one loses any money. The insurance companies reinsure and profit no matter what happens.
Why even prosecute shoplifters? Physical stores should get the same kind of insurance.
Michael Brown should have been let off, not even chased. No one loses money because the finance industry creates money out of thin air to cover all losses.
The companies are hedged, I bet. Insured. I bet no one loses any money. The insurance companies reinsure and profit no matter what happens
No. A bank is not going to be insured against these kind of small day-to-day losses. That would make no sense, since they would pay more for the insurance, than they would receive in reimbursements. As much as possible, the bank tries to push the losses onto the merchant, which is often legitimate since the merchant is responsible for checking that the CC actually belongs to the holder. If you have been shopping in the last few decades, you would know that that is rarely done, but for big purchases, like an iPhone, it is inexcusable for them to not check.
We really need to move to chip-and-pin, which will go a long way to stopping CC fraud. Many countries have already done that.
Why is Identity Theft a victimless crime, but not downloading a song or a movie? The RIAA makes a big stink every time someone listens to Brittany Spears illegally, but somehow getting free merchandise in someone else's name , that's "victimless"?
Look at the rights an individual has versus a corporation. Apparently the FBI cares more about preserving the rights of a big company to make profits than it does about the average Joe.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Are you sure that Apple suffered a loss in this case? I really doubt they were charged back. The companies are all insured, and the insurers reinsure to hedge. Basically money is created to cover the losses. Shh though, don't tell the Quantity Theory of Money people, their heads will explode.
Putting, banks, phone companies, etc. on the hook for losses incurred by ID theft. Then and only then will transactions and information really become secure. Right now it's pretty much a case of 'not my problem' as in 'not my problem we put your information on an unsecured web server outside of a fire wall with a publicly know and accessible DNS name'.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Banks are fully hedged. When Goldman Sachs stood to lose a few billions because AIG was the victim of a groupthink market panic so they couldn't roll over their loans, the Fed stepped in to reimburse Goldman Sachs. And AIG is still around, I see their upbeat commercials on TV all the time. So who really lost money? Money was created. The private sector creates tens, or hundreds, of trillions of dollars a year.
It is a sad symptom of our materialistic society when minor monetary losses are punished harshly. Consider the poor slob who steals a TV from a store during a riot. Should he be shot in the back by the police or the store owner?
I worked with a man whose identity was stolen, and the financial stuff was the least of it. The person using his name was arrested, and had warrants issued under the stolen identity. My coworker was dealing with it 10 years later, and had to regularly explain why he should not, in fact, be arrested. Clusterfuck for sure.
We really need to move to chip-and-pin, which will go a long way to stopping CC fraud.
Right, tell us another one. The only thing chips do is remove the threat of existing skimmers.
The merchant and the card provider have to pay somebody to do the admin work, insurance companies have actuaries and risk analysis people adjusting premium rates for it, and a lot of people are employed virtually full-time processing the results of ID theft - the last company I worked at (a bank) had a team of 20 people at head office, whose sole role within the organisation was to handle ID theft issues and make sure that the message got out to the right departments and counterparties. They had nothing to do with the cancelling and reissuing of cards and so on - there is a completely separate team for that.
So ID theft is big business, not just for the thieves, but for the people cleaning up after the theft as well.
So the victim gets a few days of inconvenience every time? Ah, big deal...
However, it does depend on what is bought with the stolen CC details. Consider the scenario where that person's credit card details are used to purchase access to a kiddie porn site. Maybe nobody notices the details have been lost, until the police come busting down his door after raiding the ISP for the provider and finding his details. Before it is verified that the card details were stolen, he gets smeared across some tabloid rag as a child molester, and his personal and professional reputation is destroyed. Even once the "oh, oops, the CC details were stolen, looks like he might not be a kiddie rapist after all" message drops, not everyone will hear it, and his life becomes hell.
Or the guy who finds that his CC details were used to buy a kilo of weed. He is not going to be too popular with his manager at work, although the guys in IT support will definitely want to be friends until they realize he didn't actually buy.
Banks are fully hedged. When Goldman Sachs stood to lose a few billions ...
Just because they were bailed out on billions, it does not follow that they are going to get a bail out for a thousand dollar credit card fraud.
So he got all his money back, they just never caught the person? My old housemate from University was a victim of identity theft and even after going through all his records and fighting with the bank, he still ended up being out about $3k! He worked in a grocery store and was a history major so that was *a lot* of money for him.
In this case this person got all his money back correct? I can understand wanting the person who did this brought to justice (I mean I'm sure it was weeks of paperwork and such to reverse everything; not to mention upping your security/passwords/etc on all your services), but at least he didn't lose that money permanently.
Great idea, lets move to chip & pin as it assumes waving CC company liability. If somebody steals your pin and charges your card $30,000, you will be on your own to pay up, including all over-limit fines. And don't tell me it is difficult to steal pin or card.
They spent $30,000? Couldn't they get a job? Geez. I don't go around stealing to pay for my MMORPG subscriptions. Maybe I just don't understand the criminal mind.
I had a friend who used to be a police officer. Someone got one of her checks somehow and went online and ordered checks using her account number and had them printed with her name or their name on the top of the check as if it were a joint account. Then, they went around town and bought around 5 thousand dollars worth of stuff never spending more than a few hundred dollars at each store. My friend noticed her bank account was suddenly very negative and the bank looked into it and reversed all the charges. They knew exactly who the guy was. They had his address. There was a problem. They told her that technically, she wasn't the victim of the crime. The victim was each store that he ripped off. There were more than 10 of these stores. I forget the exact number. Anyway, she went to each one and asked them to press charges. None of them would do it. It wasn't worth their time. So, in the end, he got away with it.
By not actively going after the identity thieves who are defrauding the banks, etc, they are essentially *promoting* this type of crime because they just cover it up in their operating costs.
These same bankers are used to passing on the buck in all types of illegal operations; just read about the Libor scandals, money laundering operations at branch offices of Barclays bank, or Chase and other banks in the loan scandals or auto-signing foreclosure scandals.
Very few individuals ever get held accountable for any of these actions, as many are just on going lax policies or oversight of illegal operations that are usually making enough money to be overlooked.
But, I do wonder that if these companies are not actually going after the thieves who defraud them, wouldn't the shareholders of these companies also be directly being hurt by the inaction on part of banks and therefore able to sue the companies for effectively covering up fraud (not that they ever uncover any fraud or admit there is any on their own without a prison sentence hanging over their necks)???
"You" the credit card holder ultimate pay the price of the fraud in higher and higher transaction fees, which gets passed onto the merchant, who passes it on to the consumer... so you (and me) end up paying more for all the goods we buy due to the lack of investigating, lack of proper technological measures to reduce this crime, and the lack of efficiency in the whole system. Obviously that won't hurt the economy!
Many of America's current problems is defined by a sick sense of justice. Doubt it? When was the last time you heard of anyone leaving prison as a soon to be productive member of society. America is so hell bent on "justice" which really means revenge that they will choose to pay for housing, valet services and food for about a million people a year to lock them up and show them whose boss and get that "Justice".
Justice is not really possible. Punishing people has a shitty effect of generally turning them into gradually worsening burdens on society. The problem is mostly that the people dishing out the punishments actually think the recipients of those punishments are going to see the error of their ways and learn their lessons from being locked up and turned into Bubba's wife for a year.
The problem is, a growing number of people see it as earning street credit. The system currently does nothing more than make the problems worse.
There are people who are not criminals at heart who are sent to prison and honestly do everything they can to never go back. What's sad about that is, they are the people you could have pointed a finger at and said "I'm very disappointed with your behavior and next time you visit a court room on the wrong side, you'll go to prison" it would have had a more positive effect as their criminal record wouldn't limit their ability to feed themselves.
American prison simply doesn't work. Justice is a pile of nonsense and bullshit. Revenge isn't Justice. Revenge is revenge.
The system in Norway sucks as it doesn't offer revenge for anyone. When someone goes to prison, an honest effort is made to educate and in many cases nurture prisoners into not being a burden on the people. As a result, most people never go back after spending some time there and being prepared for a more productive role in life.
Victims and their families suffer because the people who hurt them are basically sent to a hotel where their have their lives generally improved with hopes that the perpetrator would not want to do it again if they didn't need to.
The result is a highly successful system which doesn't dole out Justice but instead attempts to manage the problem and avoid having reoccurrences.
Justice is not worth anything if your stupid need for revenge only causes the asshole who wronged you to serve 10 years, get out and do worse to someone else. Then, you actually are partly responsible for their crime against the next victim.
"And the truth is, once they have your Social Security number, they have an option on your life. It's purely their decision as to when they wish to use it. Your information could have been sold, and sold again."
So is this part of the article talking about identity thieves, or companies like Choicepoint-Elsevier-LexisNexis and Acxiom? I'm not sure I can tell the difference anymore...
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
"Find him and kill him!"
-Worf, Star Trek, Deep Space 9, "Take me out to the holodeck"
Make the banks liable for ALL the costs involved and see how long they consider it a victimless crime.
There is NO SUCH THING AS IDENTITY THEFT! YOU are still YOU no matter what - your identity CANNOT be stolen!
What CAN happen is that big businesses (banks and credit companies) can sloppily engage in business with criminals whose identity they have not verified (as a cost-optimization strategy of their business model) and then when the thing goes wrong they point at one of their legit but relatively-powerless customers and blame him/her!!!!. Business saves LOTS of money by quickly and recklessly doing business this way while shifting the damage to individuals.
If business A (a store) and business B (a credit card bank) conduct a transaction with individual C (a fraudster from Russia) there is absolutely NO logical reason why individual D (a consumer with a credit card in Kentucky) who is THE ONLY PERSON NOT INVOLVED IN THE TRANSACTION should be left "holding the bag" and "D" should NEVER be manipulated into thinking he is a "victim of identity theft" an needs to be the one to clean up the mess. In this scenario, D ought to be able to sue A and B fraud (conducting a transaction in his name), C should be prosecuted for a crime, and CERTAINLY the society should not enhance business models of credit ratings firms (who are accessories in this) or "credit protection" or "credit repair" firms who are parasites in this and living off it.
First principles apply here: average people should not be victims in transactions they did not participate in while big businesses do sloppy transactions. If the businesses were forced by law to be the ones to suffer in all these frauds and the public were held harmless, it would only take HOURS (with hundreds of billions of dollars on the line and more being lost by the minute) for the businesses to implement proper secure transactions with ID verification.... POOF no more "identity theft"
If his losses are repaid, then he has justice.
What he seeks is retribution.
There is a difference.
LK
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My credit card was used to purchase airline tickets, a few thousand dollars worth, for which I was notified by my bank rather soon after. My initial thought was: Wat? Fraudster catches airplane, is met by authorities on arrival. Not a smart criminal.
Further research told me the scam involves on-selling the booking to a sucker, e.g. on Craiglist, so the fraudster actually robs the second buyer. Needs the booking because evidently even dummies require some evidence of purchase before handing the dosh over.
And yes, despite my cries seemingly no effort to track down the guilty. Not surprising seeing neither the bank nor airline were losing out - just the sucker who turns up for a flight and told his ticket is cancelled.
> 'In some way, I'm seeking some sense of justice'
I think this is spelt "revenge".
Compared to other crimes... this isn't such a bad one. Note that:
A) The loss is your time,
B) Your bank/credit company absorbs and amortizes the money stolen (only perusing it further if it makes sense financially),
C) Apart from your time (A) no property was destroyed or lost.
Compare this to a burglar who turns your home upside down, makes it impossible to assess what was lost, and then think that this burglar sells your MacBook for 10% of the asking price... Lost of property destroyed and lots of value is lost in such a crime. Not to mention psychological stress of someone invading your private home.
Or compare to a spammer, just think how many man-hours (distributed over many people) a typical spammer destroys, spamming is an extremely destructive crime (And lots of "legit" companies still send spam in one form or another).
I'm not saying identity theft is a nice crime, there are certainly bad examples of people building up a lot of debt and rather than just using a few fake checks and credit card purchases.
IMO, large part of the problem here is also companies willingness to let you take up debt without proper proof of identity. And companies fighting back aggressive and sending you to collection when you refuse to talked to them because you declare it fraud.
Note, I'm not saying fraud shouldn't be investigated, and that there aren't extreme cases that warrant a lot of investigative resources. But in many cases, such as simple credit card fraud, this is one of the least destructive crimes.
.."Jonathan Franklin" (not his real name)"
If you're going to make it up, then make it at most two syllables, not five. Hell, make it one character .. why get creative about a name that isn't real?
Michael Brown paid for the cigarillos. It was in the second half of the video everybody missed because they stopped watching when the first half supported their biases.
I have a +2% "cash back" credit card which is both free and gets paid before interest is charged. My best-case scenario for obtaining cash is probably -0.25%, considering possibilities such as foreign ATM fees, gas to get me to the right ATM or bank branch, my time in line at a teller, etc.
Which also doesn't account for essentially no financial loss if misplaced or put through the washer or indeed stolen. Not to mention the non-zero value of warranty extensions, recourse against shoddy merchants, various automatic insurance perks, and the other random benefits most credit card companies offer all of their customers to get and keep their business
I think of it more as "death by a few billion cuts" followed by the government using a phoenix down on them.
The stainless steel rat rises again?
Cheap storage VM.
I got a refusal for a capitol 1credit card in the mail. I never applied for it!
THE THIEVES HAD AN ADDRESS AND PHONE NUMBER BUT THE COPS REFUSED GO AFTER THEM!
"did they get any money?" No. because I don't have credit. So they refused to try to find out who perpetrated the fraud!
it's like when my car got stolen, they refused to take finger prints.
The car was found and city got money off me for towing it. I had to go pay them to get it back! AND they didn't respect my property!
they shoved it against a fence in their lot and crushed the rear fender. it was a 1955 VW Beetle Deluxe!
Cops and criminals, are they in cahoots? both operate for personal profit at the expense of the victims!
I think they allow a certain amount of crime to go on to justify their existence.
I think our best defense is to have Lousy Credit.
The system is broken badly, and no government or private company is doing much to really fix it. My brother had his identy stolen and it made his life miserable for years. He eventually learned that a health care company had went out of business and simply threw their records in the trash, where they were retrieved by the thief. They caught him several times, with stolen identies of many people, but he keeps doing it because there is no real deterrent. Since it's considered a non-violent crime, the cops have limited resources, and the courts hand down weak penalties, which can't be enforced if the jails/prisons are full with violent criminals. Such bullcrap that people get away with ID theft so easily. Nearly makes you want to find the person and take care of the problem on your own.
Beware of the Redittor who loans you a Sharpie.
Those exorbitant interest rates credit card companies charge are to pay for deadbeats who don't pay back their credit card accounts, not fraud. (Empasis added.)
FYI: In credit card parlance, a deadbeat is someone who pays off their card every month. The people who don't pay it back are customers [citation needed!].
Someone (I always suspected a neighbour was involved, but without any proof I kept my suspicions to myself) once used my identity to get a 'platinum' credit card issued in my name, and spent a few hundred pounds on some item or other. I knew nothing about it until a bill arrived, which was alarming as I did not use credit cards at all back then. The card company was amazingly helpful, and cancelled the entire amount, with very little effort on my part. A while later, not long after I'd lost my job, a new platinum card arrived at my address. The card had a fairly hefty spending limit, and I just happened to be in need of some ready credit, so I dove right in as the saying goes. That was four years ago and I've been using the card ever since, though I am in good standing because I never miss the repayments.