Crime Pays For Identity Thieves
from the doesn't-look-good dept
Identity theft is certainly on the rise, as a new report suggests that 3.4% of US consumers have been identity theft victims of some kind in the last year. At first, I was afraid the definition of identity theft might be too broad, but the one used for the study was apparently: “a financial crime in which thieves represent themselves as the victims by stealing critical private information, such as social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, addresses, credit card numbers or bank account numbers.” That sounds pretty accurate, meaning that identity theft is an even bigger problem than many people suspected. Worse news is that only 1 out of every 700 cases of identity theft ends with the scammer being caught.
Comments on “Crime Pays For Identity Thieves”
1 in 700 but...
What is the average number of such thefts per thief? I would imagine that large number of these people still dozens at a time through badly protected private records at various companies. So could the actual rate of apprehension be rather high is an average con artist steals 500 or 600 identities before they are caught?
Personally, I do not doubt that at most 10-20% of people doing this get caught quickly, but it is the same as with other crime. If you have a 10% of being caught per act, odds catch up with you pretty quickly. Of course the fact that 80% or so of felons commit new crimes after jail-time is not encouraging. I guess what I am trying to say [it is late here] is that I would like to see some more numbers to give these more context.
Re: 1 in 700 but...
There are undoubtedly a few Frank Abengales out there. I guess it all depends on where you decide to insert yourself into the food chain.
The ones who are likely to get caught are the ones who are forced to deal the the “kenetic” end of the process. You know, the folks who double swipe cards, receive the credit cards, pickup the goods at the hotel mail-drop, on-sell identity information, etc.
The good ones will build ghosts and move from one identity to the next once the reach a certain (monitary) point. After all, if the intent is to make enough to “retire”, you’re going to need to maintain a good exit identiy.