Army Sgt. Joshua Munson huddled with the rest of the 282nd Engineering Company at a base in Kuwait and prepared for his second deployment across the border — Baghdad-bound.
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Back home, a man staying in Munson’s Dormont house readied for a journey through Florida, Chicago, California and Las Vegas, spending thousands of dollars on plane tickets, electronic gadgets and luxurious hotels paid for in Munson’s name.
“I was doing missions while he was gambling in Vegas,” Munson, 28, said two days after a court hearing for the thief last week. Robert Frank Key Jr., 31, of Clearwater Beach, Fla., pleaded guilty to federal identity theft charges stemming from $12,800 in purchases made with Munson’s bank accounts and credit cards from March through June 2010, while Munson was deployed in Iraq.
Thousands of people likely will fall victim to the same crime during the frenzied holiday season. Incidents of lost and stolen credit and debit cards increase by 19 percent in the last two months of the year, according to PNC Bank.
“We absolutely see an upswing in identity theft” during the holidays, said Detective Todd Moses of the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office. “Everybody’s running around like crazy,” and it takes people longer to notice someone’s stealing from them, said Moses, a member of the county’s 10-person Financial Crimes Task Force, an investigative unit that includes the Secret Service, Pittsburgh and state police, postal inspectors and immigration agents.
Last year, 7 percent of U.S. households had a victim of identity theft, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics report released last week. Victims say the crime leaves them feeling powerless and frustrated.
They file police reports, but local police cannot stop a credit card purchase in another state. They cancel credit cards, but thieves open another in their name.
Ask Lana Gautier what she lost, and she does not mention the $30,000 right away. First, she tells of losing control.
“I freaked out,” said Gautier, who lives in the Los Angeles area and runs the website www.identitytheftmanifesto.com, which aggregates advice and news for identity theft victims. “I had anxiety attacks. I would try to fall asleep, and I would wake up because my heart was just racing.”
She found out her identity had been stolen about five years ago, when she applied for a job that required a background check and learned that someone using her name had an address in Mesa, Ariz. Since then, she has frozen her credit, signed up with a credit monitoring service and deleted as much of her personal information as she could find online.
Part of what makes the crime so insidious is that the stolen item — a person’s identity — is what a person normally would use to reclaim stolen property. When Munson found out Key had opened a Discover card in his name, he called to cancel it, but could not answer any of the security questions to prove he was who he said he was.
“It was my name, but it wasn’t my card,” Munson said. “Imagine that argument.”
Key’s lawyer, Robert Donatoni of West Chester, said his client took responsibility for the theft. Key is scheduled to be sentenced on April 20. He is free on $20,000 unsecured bond, meaning he did not have to pay upfront, but would forfeit the money if he fails to show for his sentencing.
Munson learned of the first suspicious charges during a phone call with his fiancee, Emily Nietz, 27, of Dormont. One of his credit card companies sent a notice saying someone had tried to change his address.
Key had stayed in Munson’s house as a guest of Munson’s tenant, who was renting the house during Munson’s deployment, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. In the basement, Key found the unlocked filing cabinet where Munson kept years of bank statements, canceled checks, credit card statements, even his birth certificate, Munson said.
Munson and Nietz worked as quickly as they could to close accounts. They told his credit card companies that he was half a world away, yet businesses from Florida to California continued to accept cards with his name.
“I would assume any transaction that happened in the United States with my card, the credit card company would be like, ‘Hold on a second. You told us you were going to Iraq, and you’re charging in Las Vegas. How did that happen?'” Munson said.
Munson and his unit in northern Iraq were building roads, bridges and bases, and completing supply runs and convoy protection missions. During calls home to Nietz, she filled him in on Key’s recent travels based on the bills that were piling up. Nietz told him about electronics purchases at Best Buy, plane tickets and hotel bills at The Venetian in Las Vegas.
When they saw Key was buying plane tickets, they called the Transportation Security Administration, but the agency would not do anything because he was flying with an Illinois-issued ID that had Key’s picture and Munson’s name. That led Munson to wonder, what if Key had been a terrorist?
“As far as anyone else is concerned, I’m a good U.S. citizen, and I’m flying around the country,” Munson said.
The theft consumed Munson’s and Nietz’s limited time on the phone together during the first months of his deployment.
“We’re not talking about how much we miss each other or what’s going on at the house or her day. We’re talking about this stupid guy and what’s going on in his life, and what the next step is to stopping him, and who we have to call next, and what she’s trying, and what I was trying. It was nuts,” Munson said.
Though the police report they filed didn’t do any good at first, it became necessary when creditors tried to collect.
“You have to be able to prove something happened to you, or they won’t dismiss the charges,” Munson said.
Even then, effects can linger on the victim’s credit report.
“Credit’s a finicky thing. You could be doing really well for a long time; you could be pushing 800,” said Munson, who owns his own business and bought his house when he was 23. But delinquencies — even if they’re fraudulent — cause ripples through a person’s credit.
“Just because it’s taken off the report doesn’t mean it hasn’t affected you. It’s so complex,” he said.
Prevention is key, Moses said. People should review their credit report — and their children’s — at least once a year. One of the fastest-growing areas of identity theft is for children younger than 18, said Claudia Farrell, Federal Trade Commission spokeswoman.
Monitor the information available about you online and limit it as much as possible, including social media profiles, and be wary of transactions that are too easy, Gautier said. “If it’s too convenient for you, it’s too convenient for an identity thief.”
It’s tedious at first, but “it will become your habit,” Gautier said. “Paranoia never killed anyone.”
