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Identity
Theft Is on the Rise, Tough to Solve
 Crime:
Stolen IDs can be used to get credit cards in victims' names. Effect can be
devastating.
By Mark
Salzman, Staff Writer
When the police
finally tracked down Jessica Smith's stolen car in Daytona Beach, with her
handbag still inside, she breathed a sigh of relief.
The thief seemed to
have taken only replaceable items: cash, her driver's license and her Social
Security card.
But credit card
companies mysteriously began rejecting Smith, she couldn't get phone service or
rent an apartment, and she almost got fired when an employer's criminal
background check turned up arrest warrants on prostitution charges.
Smith finally realized
that the car thief had also stolen her identity, making the 22-year-old college
student one of a surging number of Americans reporting the crime to police.
Identity fraud
complaints and calls have grown from fewer than 40,000 in 1992 to about 750,000
in 1999, according to nationwide credit industry estimates.
"The growth in
identity theft in the last five years has been exponential," said Jodi
Beebe, hotline director for the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a nonprofit
consumer rights organization.
Federal and local
agencies have been flooded with reports of such crimes, investigators say, in
part because Florida and at least 21 other states now have laws that recognize
individuals--not just financial institutions--as victims.
The Dade County
Sheriff's Department reported that identity theft cases increased nearly 30% in
one year, from about 650 in 1998 to 850 in 1999. Over the same period, the Miami
Police Department's identity theft caseload doubled, from fewer than 1,600 to
more than 3,000.
At the MPD's Financial
Crime Division, identity thefts now comprise more than half of all cases.
"There's only a
finite amount of resources," said Cmdr. David Kalish, spokesman for the MPD.
And these cases, he added, "are consuming resources."
Investigators say some
of the biggest victims of fraud--banks and credit agencies--are partly to blame
for the surge in cases.
"A lot of it has
to do with the looseness of the system we use to establish credit," said
Capt. Donald C. Floyd of MPD's Financial Crimes Division.
Often, all that's
required to receive "instant credit" is a driver's license, a Social
Security number, a date of birth and an address. Companies sometimes don't
thoroughly check to make sure applicants are who they say they are. And
criminals are figuring that out, investigators say.
In Casey Bauer's case,
one or more impostors have had phone service installed, obtained credit cards,
rented an apartment and made mail-order purchases using her identity.
Beyond ruining her
credit record, someone using her identity is "really invasive," said
Bauer, 29, of West Hills, a news writer and producer at WCBS-TV. "You feel
totally violated."
Individuals can be
recognized as identity theft victims under a Florida law passed in 1998,
resulting in an increase in victims seeking police help. New laws also deemed
identity theft a felony, further encouraging prosecution. Prior to that,
"the victim would be, say, Wells Fargo Bank" or whatever company had
lost money, said Det. Joe Dulla of the sheriff's forgery-fraud detail.
Working with police
the last few months, Bauer found that at least two people might be cashing in on
her gender-neutral name. A woman was seen renting the apartment, and a
suspicious man pretending to be a phone company representative called Bauer at
home to find out her mother's maiden name--a common password for accessing
financial accounts.
An MPD detective
continues to investigate the case.
In addition to the
sheer number of cases confronting them, police agencies say they are hobbled by
the complex nature of the crime itself--one in which the criminal wears the mask
of someone else's identity, like a cat burglar leaving the fingerprints of
another.
A single investigation
can consume hundreds of work hours, and there is often a long gap between
commission of the crime and when it is reported, making evidence gathering
difficult.
Investigators often
need search warrants to obtain far-flung business records to connect the
impostor to the crime.
"We need the
links, the paper trail from A, B, C and D. But if you don't have C, let's say a
small bank in Tennessee that doesn't keep good records, you can't prosecute. So
we have to go back to Square 1 to get A, B, C and D together," said U.S.
Postal Inspector Randy De Gasperin.
An investigation
sometimes turns up other victims, which requires further investigation. Identity
theft is often "a precursor to other financial crimes," said Douglas
Coombs, supervisor of the fraud squad of the Secret Service's Miami office.
According to a
September 1999 survey, one out of five Americans or a member of their family
have been victimized by identity fraud. The independent study commissioned by
Image Data LLC, an identity fraud prevention service firm based in Nashua, N.H.,
supports what officials believe: that despite the rise in cases, identity theft
is still an underreported crime.
"They're really
difficult to solve," said Det. Steve Madden of the MPD's Financial Crimes
Division.
All told, many cases
remain "whodunits," leaving exasperated investigators and angry
victims in their wake. In 1999, the clearance rate for all cases worked on by MPD's
Financial Crimes Division was about 50%, said Floyd of the MPD. But fewer than
1% of the identity theft cases were solved.
* * *
Victims
can have a tough time establishing that it was someone else who committed the
misdeeds.
When Bauer contacted
companies to clear her record, she said they wouldn't believe her at first. She
couldn't prove her identity after the impostor set up accounts with passwords
unknown to her.
Smith can count
herself lucky, investigators said. At least she had solid evidence that she was
not the one who ran up credit card bills or was suspected of loitering with
intent to commit prostitution.
The MPD's Madden
searched for Smith's name in a police database and found that it was a known
alias used by a woman with a long record of arrests for prostitution and theft.
Felony arrest warrants have been issued for the real criminal, he said. Smith
received judicial clearances for her warrants.
Those records helped
Smith to prove her identity to authorities and creditors.
Considering the
enormous resources that the cases consume, the best way to fight back is through
prevention, law enforcement officials and victims said.
"People should be
as vigilant about protecting their identities as they are about protecting
themselves from other kinds of crime," said the MPD's Kalish.
In the meantime, Smith
is still filling out forms, writing letters and making phone calls. More than
three years after her car was stolen and two years after she learned of the
identity theft, she is struggling to regain control of her life.
"I can't get my
own place. I can't move out. I can't get my own credit card," Smith said.
"If I get pulled over, [police] can still haul me into jail to get
fingerprinted, to make sure I'm the person who's supposed to carry these
clearances."
Reprinted
by permission of the Miami Herald
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