For years, a 52-year-old Wichita man had a fairly stable, simple life, working for the same employer, living in the same house.
But in 2008, things got complicated.
He discovered someone had stolen his identity and racked up almost $1 million in debts.
His personal information has been used to fraudulently get credit in at least three other states; for home loans, including one for $520,000; for a Lincoln Navigator and for various services, totaling about $906,000 over several years.
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To protect his identity from thieves, he is trying to get a new Social Security number, something that is rarely granted, he’s been told.
Especially in an age where so much information is accessible, anyone can be hit by identity theft — even the state’s chief law enforcement official, Attorney General Derek Schmidt.
Last year, Schmidt got a call from his credit card company asking if he had bought telecommunication services in Italy. No. His credit card wasn’t lost or stolen, but someone obtained his card number. He still doesn’t know how it occurred. “I have changed my card number,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt said a Federal Trade Commission official recently told him that identity theft and fraud is the fastest growing crime the agency sees.
Last year, 540 identity theft cases were reported to the Wichita Police Department, and many of those cases involve thieves using someone’s Social Security number, said Lt. Clark Wiemeyer, who oversees the department’s financial crimes section. Through May 3 this year, 225 cases have been reported.
Some people don’t report identity theft because of the “embarrassment factor,” said Sedgwick County Deputy District Attorney Marc Bennett. They fear that others will see them as foolish or unable to handle their affairs, Bennett said.
Identity thieves can be hard to pursue, partly because their crimes often cross jurisdictions and they often use stealth. Bennett says it can be like trying to find a “needle in a stack of needles.”
A key step to fighting the crime is reporting it, and authorities recommend that victims report it to law enforcement, the FTC, credit bureaus and financial institutions.
Nationwide problem
In the post-9/11 era, where a false identity can be a national security concern, federal prosecutors are using a law to toughen the penalty. If someone uses another’s identity in connection with other crimes, it becomes aggravated identity theft, which brings a two-year mandatory sentence added to the sentence for the underlying crime, said Brent Anderson, an assistant U.S. attorney in Wichita.
Federal prosecutors use the identity theft law to prosecute immigration cases, drug trafficking and white-collar crimes like mortgage fraud, Anderson said.
The added two-year sentence could be used, for example, against a drug trafficker who gives police a false ID.
Across Kansas, thousands of people use false identification to get jobs, Anderson said.
Federal prosecutors working out of the Wichita office prosecute dozens of document fraud cases from across the state.
Identity theft is not new. “In the criminal world … people have always used other people’s identities to keep from being caught,” Anderson said.
But in the electronic age, he said, “you’ve got a whole new level of identity theft.”
There probably isn’t a bank or credit card fraud case that doesn’t involve an allegation of aggravated identity theft, he said.
The market for documents used to steal someone’s identity is robust, Anderson said, and sometimes it plays out this way: A “smash-and-grab” thief steals a purse and rushes to a store to buy as much as he can, say $1,200 worth, with a stolen credit card before the victim can report it. The thief then takes valid documents from the purse and sells them on the street for $500 to a vendor.
“I can tell you the going (retail) rate for a set of valid documents is at least $1,000,” Anderson said.
The stolen credit card isn’t worth a lot because it gets reported as stolen, but the other documents in the purse become “breeder documents” that get reproduced maybe 50 times, Anderson said.
The smash-and-grab thief can be federally charged with aggravated identity theft, which adds two years to the typical one-year sentence he can get for the underlying credit card fraud.
New scams
Identity theft takes a variety of paths. Schmidt, the attorney general, said he has been hearing of a crime occurring around Kansas where the scammer poses as someone with the fraud-control unit of a customer’s credit card company. The scammer calls the customer and says the fraud unit has noticed unusual activity on the person’s credit card and gains the customer’s confidence. During the conversation, the scammer asks the customer to confirm the three-digit security code on the back of the card. The whole point is to get that number.
You should never have to give card information to a card company, Schmidt said, adding that if someone gets such a call they should thank the caller, hang up and call the customer service line on the back of the card. He took that step himself, he said, when he got the call that someone was using his card number in Italy, to make sure the call was legitimate.
Wiemeyer, the police lieutenant, noted two other recent identity theft trends in Wichita. One involves thieves fraudulently filing someone’s tax returns and getting the refunds put on the thieves’ prepaid, loadable credit cards. When the victims go to file their taxes, they realize someone has posed as them to get the refund.
Another involves scammers going online and fraudulently applying for a loan in the victim’s name, often from a quick-cash outlet.
The typical identity theft in Wichita involves theft of services including cellphones and utilities, Wiemeyer said.
Protecting yourself
Because so many identity thefts involve the use of Social Security numbers, Wiemeyer said, people should guard the number. “You don’t need that in your billfold,” he said. “You should have it memorized. Don’t keep it on you.”
One of the most common ways to become a victim is leaving paperwork, checks and credit cards in vehicles, he said. The information can be used to create a fraudulent driver’s license.
Another thing, he said: Be careful what you discard. Shred documents with personal information.
And “continually check your credit report,” three to four times a year, Wiemeyer said.
Thieves target the elderly because they are less apt to check credit reports and because they tend to have good credit, said Bennett, the deputy district attorney.
Years to fix
The 52-year-old Wichita man who became a victim of identity theft said he discovered it around 2008 when he learned that someone had used his information to get a $520,000 mortgage on a home in Georgia. The house had gone into foreclosure. The man, who had never lived in Georgia, felt frustrated when he tried to convince the mortgage company that he didn’t owe the money. Other thefts using his identity have occurred in Illinois and Oklahoma.
The man, who asked that his name not be used to protect his identity, said he was referred to Consumer Credit Counseling Service, a not-for-profit agency whose Wichita office helps people with financial and credit issues. Since 2008, Jorge Torres, a credit counselor with CCCS, has helped the man dispute credit problems that ended up on his record because of the theft and fraud. This year, somebody has been using the man’s identity to apply online for credit cards, Torres said.
In California around 1988, the man lost his wallet, which contained his driver’s license and Social Security card. He wonders if, years later, someone used that identifying information to commit the fraud and thefts showing up on his credit reports.
The man has been providing documentation to federal officials in an effort to get his Social Security number changed.
“He wants everything to stop,” Torres said.
“It is a real crime that can happen to anyone.”
