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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?
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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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.
Until the next person who 'bought' that identity does the same thing.
Having your space violated, either physical or online, is not always easy to get over. If your house is broken into and someone steals your TV, fine...you get a replacement TV. But you still feel 'violated'.
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.
They tend to "lock down" credit once your identity has been stolen it is unlikely to happen again anytime soon. Totally agree with you on the space violated thing though.
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No, what we need is for companies/schools/etc. to stop using a SSN as a secret identifier. Your social security card even explicitly says it is not meant to be used as such a thing.
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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Every time you pay for dinner at a restaurant with your credit card, you're giving your waiter everything they need to steal your identity, especially if they ask to see your ID before serving you alcohol. Credit cards were designed in the pre-internet era. It blows my mind that we haven't moved on to something more secure.
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.
Until you get mugged because you are carrying hundreds of dollars of cash around. No one will reimburse that either when it's cash. It's all your loss. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against cash in the least, but there is no fool proof method. Before debit and ATM cards were all the rage, more people got mugged for the cash they carried on them. Now that cards are more prevalent, less people have cash on them to drive the "muggings" market, but CC and bank card fraud is through the roof.