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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.'"
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.
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There's all kinds of identity theft and only some of it is credit cards. With debit cards it really is a fraud against you because your personal bank account gets debited immediately. And there's other worse identity thefts against people -- I've read stories of people losing entire retirement accounts and home equity.
I don't think that theft from people is generally taken seriously by the police, period, whether it's burglary, car theft, muggings/robbery or anything else. Pretty much all of those things don't rate with them at all and their policing policy is more like containment than actual interest in preventing it.
The police waste a huge amount of manpower and resources on stupid shit like drugs and anti-terrorism and other bullshit. If those resources went into property crimes it would go a long way towards preventing them.
As a merchant responsible quite a few online stores, I want to dispute the quoted claim and take it one step forward. We bear the losses when a chargeback occurs. That's the end of that.
Now the part that REALLY upsets me is that it isn't even close to being feasible to report a known credit card thief!
I have enough data (50+ stores into one shipping program) between orders and chargeback reports that I can tell you full residential street names of known credit card thief. Addresses that have 2-3 chargebacks and counting. You would think with this information I could easily report it to the authorities? Nope. No easy online forms exist. If you search for them you will find they are all setup for the victim to do the reporting. It's a damn shame because though I won't have to deal with the individual scam artist(s) anymore (by now I would have blocked them with heuristics), there was an opportunity to stop them from stealing more credit cards and causing more merchants headaches.
Rarely comment on slashdot, forgot about proofreading.
Wanted to add that I'm 99.99% certain of some known thief locations. When we go back to look at reports we will see sometimes 5+ chargebacks from one address. Different credit cards with different billing addresses, but same shipping address.
Anyway I don't need the doubters to believe if I'm sure enough or not, the point I want to make is that it isn't easy for me to simply report it to a tip line. At least not as easy as I wish I could be. And definitely not easy(fast) enough that my boss would be okay with me "saving the world" on his dime.
On last thing to add to that (damn I wish we could edit). When the BANKS initiate the chargeback process - none of them even care about the shipping address*. Do you realize what that means? They took enough information in the chargeback report to confirm the obvious - the place the card was used - but did not record who the merchandise was shipped to. Hint: It's the thief. The thief shipped it to themselves, and no one but me, the merchant you are criticizing, even cares.
So don't loop us in with the banks. We bear the chargeback - now we are out the merchandise and the money (and occasionally with some processors - an additional chargeback fee. The bank does nothing. And without important data like a shipping address, how could they in the future if they decided to?
*Sure, not every online transaction is for goods but you would think they would at least have a standardized way of collecting the information to eventually report it to authorities.
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...)
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