January 9, 2010 by
Filed under fight identity theft
There are 5 kinds of Identity Theft but most people are just aware of credit card identity theft. That is just 20% of the problem. Here are all 5.
1) Driver’s License Identity Theft
2) Social Security Number Identity Theft
3) Character/Criminal Identity Theft
4) Medical Identity Theft
5) Financial Identity Theft
You are vulnerable to having your identity stolen. You have a significant investment in protecting your good reputation so the last thing you want is for someone to use your driver’s license to commit a crime, not show up for “your” trial which will result in a bench warrant being issued against you. That is exactly what more and more people are experiencing as victims of Driver’s License Identity Theft. If that were to happen to you, you would need a lawyer, probably in the middle of the night.
Given that only one in seven hundred identity thieves are caught, there will be no slowdown in this crime wave any time soon but you can protect yourself from being the next victim. You need a monitoring system that lets you know if a thief opens a post office box, files a change of address card, tries to buy a house or opens a new bank account in your name. If you are falsely accused of a crime due to someone stealing your identity you WILL need the help of the best lawyers.
Social Security – Did you know that on July 1, 2006, 32 states passed laws that require business owners to see a passport or Social Security card from each employee? The government admits that we have 10 million illegal aliens in the country, but business experts put that number between 25 – 30 million. But just for argument’s sake, let’s assume 10 million: if each one of those folks paid just in FICA withholding each week, ,000,000 would be going to the Social Security Administration on a weekly basis. Given they are FOUR TRILLION in debt, they have NO incentive to let the actual owner of the Social Security number know that another 10, 20, 80 people are using that same Social Security number since they only have to pay out to the real owner. But the IRS is going to take a real interest when they see how much “you” earned at your 10, 20 or 80 different jobs but none of “you” did the proper withholding. Your problem begins when the IRS notices that “you” did not pay the federal and state withholding taxes – the real “you” will have to hire an attorney to fight the IRS or you will just pay them because it is less expensive or you may spend years trying to convince the IRS that you didn’t earn that money
Medical – I met a woman the other day who recently went into the hospital for some test and they asked her how her arm was doing. She didn’t know what they were talking about. Apparently someone else had used her medical insurance to treat a broken arm. What if it would have been something more serious, like someone got a heart transplant using her insurance. That would effect her lifetime cap and it would definitely pollute her Medical Data Base if there was nothing wrong with HER heart. Medical identity theft effects your ability to get insurance, proper health care if unconscious and they are relying on wrong info/blood type/heart condition of someone else. HIPPA won’t let you into your own file if you admit that positive HIV test isn’t YOU. That broken arm is now in her medical database. Thank God it wasn’t something more serious. You are going to need a good lawyer to fight this battle to get the other people’s info out of YOUR file.
Driver’s License ID Theft – The government recently decided that the employees at all Department of Motor Vehicles needed to be able to recognize what the driver’s licenses of all the other states looked like so that when a resident of Florida moves to California, the CA DMV can recognize a “real” Florida license. In order to assist these employees, the federal government made up a little book with the EXACT specs on each state’s driver’s license. About a week after that book was mailed out to each state’s DMV it was already being sold on the internet, spawning a new and very lucrative business. All a criminal needs is a laptop computer, a printer, a laminator and that little book, and they have themselves a very prosperous little criminal enterprise. The police cannot tell the difference between the “real” license and the fake one. In fact, they can’t tell the difference between the “database you” and the “Real You” that looks back at you from your mirror!
Driver’s License ID Theft often affects your character/criminal Identity. A prostitute stole a teacher’s purse. She told her principal and friends about it so everyone knew it was possible that something bad might come of this theft. When a newspaper ran the story of the teacher being arrested for prostitution it wasn’t hard to explain to her friends and neighbors what had happened. It was a small town so everyone knew the teacher was a victim of id theft but is that teacher going to be able to change jobs and go to another town where they don’t know her? Her character has been stolen now.
Financial ID theft, this is the one everyone focuses on because we are losing billions each year to id theft. But here is the thing, you know those cute little commercials on TV with the man’s voice coming from the woman’s body and the woman’s voice coming from the man’s body. They talk about ZERO liability. That is a lie! If you don’t contest a bill within 60 days YOU are stuck with it and with our new bankruptcy laws you can’t discharge it. How are you going to contest a bill you never got. These ID thieves are doing change of address cards and having your mail forwarded to another place, a PO box or another residence. And by the way, the Postal Inspector I met the other night mentioned that the post office doesn’t ask for proof that the change of address card you are filing is actually YOU. Anyone can go into the post office and file a change of address card. So how can you contest a bill you don’t get? Sounds like you are going to need another lawyer. All of this ID Fraud stuff sounds like the lawyers full employment bill to me.
The Federal Trade Commission, which is the lead agency handling ID Theft, says that on average, it takes a person 600 hours to restore themselves after being a victim. That is FIFTEEN 40 hour work weeks. NO ONE has that kind of free time. People need the protection of having their credit monitored so they know if someone is opening new accounts, forwarding their mail or opening a PO Box in their name. There are lots of new companies that do credit monitoring but there is only one company that does restoration and that is Kroll Background America, Inc.
Kroll is the only company that was allowed to go below ground zero to remove the gold from the vaults after 9/11. When the FBI, CIA and Saudi government could not find where Sadam hid the Saudi money that he stole, the Saudis hired Kroll. Kroll found it, recovered it and returned the money to the Saudis. The Security and Exchange Commission hired Kroll to discover where all the Enron money went and the City of San Diego hired Kroll to investigate and do the forensic accounting on the recent pension scandal. If our government and big corporations hire Kroll to protect them, why wouldn’t you?
Ms. Rachman has been an attorney since 1996 and has become so fascinated by the fastest growing crime in the world that she became a Certified Identity Theft Risk Management Specialist. To take action to protect yourself, go to
www.prepaidlegal.com/hub/brachman