My wallet was stolen 2 years ago. I canceled everything and thought it was all over… but no. Got a call from my dad saying Target called him. Turns out someone in NYC opened a charge account and bought over $1000 at two stores, using an old address, disconnected phone 3, but correct SS#. The disconnected # is what tipped them off; they called my dad b/c that’s the only number of mine they could find (thank god I have an unlisted #). Had to put a fraud alert on my accounts, contact the FTC and credit bureaus, call the police, all that. Pain in the ass, but I’m glad it was caught before anything bad happened to my credit.
The weird thing is, Target does not seem to care. They said I could try to get the police to investigate, but the police would most likely not do anything. I asked if they had it on video tape, since it happened yesterday, but they said it wasn’t worth it to them to bother watching the tape to find out who did it. I’m not exaggerating. Not worth it. The police won’t investigate.
Wow. No wonder identity theft is so rampant. The person who did this is most likely going to get away with it; I don’t know about you, but $1000 is a pretty big tab. I guess it’s not my problem, since Target considers it “shrinkage” and they write it off, and they’re not going to try to make me pay for it. Makes me wonder if I should have gone into a life of crime, since it’s obviously so damn easy to do without consequences.
The only time I’m happy about my crappy credit is when I hear stories like this. The person who stole my purse a few years back didn’t even try to use the check card, as far as I know. I only had $2 in the bank (why you’d steal a purse from a retail slave three days before payday is beyond me) and while my bank happily lets me overdraw, it seems that they weren’t able to buy anything with the card in the few hours they had it before I cancelled it. And there was only $3.14 in cash, so they couldn’t even buy cigarettes. If they try to open accounts using my info (I think a paystub with my social was in the purse, but they usually don’t spend time searching through papers…grab cash and cards and dump purse in nearest trash can) they’d be turned down. So the best protection from identity theft is crappy credit!
You are right, Rubystreak . Doesn’t seem like anyone does want to do anything about identity theft. And I have to tell you it doesn’t get any better even when you know who the thief is.
My ex-husband (with the help of his new girlfirend) used my name and social security number to open accounts that he didn’t pay. You wouldn’t believe the stuff that turned up on my credit.
I got told that even if you want to bother filing a report, most police departments don’t really want to take them and won’t do anything with them anyway because they are too busy with other things to bother with a non-violent crime.
Even more shocking is that the last statistic I read about identity theft said that over 65% percent of the time, it’s someone you know who (an ex-spouse, a sibling, a child, etc.). Wow.
Sorry, can’t find the cite right now, and the statistic has possibly changed by now. But I would wager that the number has gone up, not down
My wallet was stolen from work. It was statistically most likely a student, though now I wonder… since someone held onto the ID and stuff for 2 years, it was either sold or someone stashed it and planned to use it well after my post-theft vigilance had ended. Ultimately, yeah, it was someone I know-- a kid, a co-worker (doubtful), or one of the staff. Scary and upsetting.
I guess the moral of the story is, be freakin’ careful. If you lose your ID, the problems you have could go on for many years. I had no idea. I’m kind of pissed off about it, because the credit monitoring cost $100, and who knows if a year of it will be enough? The theft was 2 bloody years ago, and when I got a credit report for my mortgage last year, it was great, so this person waited quite a while before going on a spending spree. This was really out of the blue and bizarre, it happening now.
Yeah, crime does pay. Too bad I’m not into the idea of being a criminal, because I bet it’d be a cinch.
I agree that the stores and even credit card companies’ lackadaisacal attitude towards identity theft is puzzling. I spend $15/month for monitoring services for my husband and me, because I’m paranoid that someone will steal our identity. Anyone working at a bank or credit card processing center has everything they need to open up accounts and bilk they system for all it’s worth.
I have read that you as a consumer can ask for a PIN to be placed on your credit cards in case they are stolen. I think that is a great idea. I don’t know why consumers, and merchants, resist it.
The credit card is the fraud.
They make so much off of us that “shrinkage” is the correct term after all.
You may not remember but this all started in the early 70’s with a ruling that interstate banks were not subject to laws of “non-home base” states. And South Dakota removed their usury law and there was a literal land rush to move banks there. And that was the end of honest lenders.
They let the thieves get away with it out of professional courtesy.
People are bad with math. Even the people running big companies are innumerate (?).
They think in terms of this crime not being worth pursuing. If they thought in terms of little of this would happen if they went after each one, the number of frauds would drop, the cost of going after the cheats would drop, their losses would drop.
I compare it two 2 states which I drive in. In one, the traffic laws are absolutely enforced completely. In the other, it is madness. But the first place actually has a lower budget for traffic patrol per capita since very few people even think of speeding and such. And since they hardly ever write tickets, the 2nd place doesn’t even get the advantage of revenue from tickets. Nonetheless, the “lawless” place police that “obviously” they can’t stop everybody and it isn’t worth their time to even bother trying.
Zero tolerance in such matters pay off big, but you have to be willing to spend money on going after the little guys or else you end up losing even more due to the multiplier effect.
I find the retailer’s lack of interest surprising after recently reading that Target is essentially a high-tech crime lab masquerading as a discount chain.
Don’t believe the hype. They were very blase about the $1000. I was kind of shocked about that. I really want this SOB to get arrested… she tried to open a Zales Jewelry Store account today. DENIED! DENIED! Bwahaha!
But not arrested. So annoying. I think I now hate this person who is pretending to be me. I want her ass in jail, but the nice Citibank guy who I spoke to today about the latest fraud attempt reiterated that the police really do not bother with this stuff.
How long will this go on? When will she realize the gig is up and ditch my info for good? Soon, I hope. I don’t look forward to facing bemused creditors on a daily basis. :mad:
Did you actually talk to the police about it, or just take the Citibank guy’s word? And if Target has video ID of the woman…that would just drive me crazy to not be allowed to see it…it might be someone you know and could identify!
I personally know someone who managed to get his hands on quite a few AmEx numbers and ring up over $500,000 before he was caught! He went to jail for the $376K he couldn’t pay back.
The story has good twist: While he was in jail, he rented his house to some people who offered to pay his mortgage instead of paying rent. Which they did not do.
Payback’s a bitch, but often funny. And I know this story first hand, and it is true.
I called the police and they said to come in and file a report, which I’m doing today. However, these crimes are not local so I don’t know what my local PD even COULD do about it.
There are MANY varieties of “Identity Theft” and some of them are extremely profitable when exploited the right(?) way. I could write pages and pages about it, which I hope to find enough time to do while on my sabbatical this summer.
There are entire industries around ID Theft protection and recovery, but (imho) the general populace has VERY conflicting desires in this arena.
They want to be “protected” but they also don’t want to be “inconvenienced”. They want to be instantly refunded for any losses associated with a stolen credit card number, but they also demand instant purchasing abilities for their iTunes and their eBay auctions.
Newsflash: The fraudsters are in love with the internet for the exact same reasons that everyone else is.
The most valuable defense in maintaining the integrity of one’s identity is vigilance and awareness on the part of the individual, and I know very few people who are vigilant and aware. Even people in my field.
None of my identity theft has involved the Internet, since they don’t have any credit card #s they can use. I think that’s a whole 'nother ball of wax from what I’m dealing with. My ID thief has an old ID with a SS#, using it to get instant credit from stores.
I’m not really sure what I could have done to prevent this. I canceled everything in the wallet. I got a credit check done last year and all was well. All of the info used was taken from a wallet stolen 2 years ago, so whatever excessive vigilance I had at the time, I didn’t expect to have to keep it up this long. I guess the only way to prevent this in the future is to keep your phone # unlisted, because the disconnected phone # is what tipped off Target that it wasn’t me.
Wouldn’t want to be blaming the victim here now, would you? There’s only so much you can do to prevent this kind of stuff. Part of the liability goes to these stores who give instant credit, and then don’t make much effort to prosecute people like my little thief. The cops are indifference. Seems like the perfect petri dish for criminals and the consumer’s lack of vigilence is only one part of it.
The stores give instant credit because there is a (significant) demand for instant credit, not because they want to make it easy for peoples’ identities to be stolen.
Unfortunately, the majority of people really don’t think about such things until they or someone close to them falls victim to it. If that stops being the case, the demands on retailers will change, and the retailers will change.
Maybe applying for credit should be like applying to buy a gun-- if you need it so fast that can’t wait for a background check, you probably shouldn’t have it in the first place. Instant credit seems to be the culprit here, people’s eagerness to get it and the stores’ eagerness to give it. I doubt it’ll change anytime soon, either.
If he hasn’t sold your SS# and the address from the ID online, or any other personal information of your’s aquired from the physical theft, then you’re lucky. There’s a active, vibrant, and profitable online black market for such things.
I had an old box of checks stolen during a series of burglaries a few years back. 4 breakins within a week, into my locked and ADP-alarmed house, resulted in me relocating, needless to say. I had no idea the checks (with an old address, same acct#) had been stolen (along with my bike, playstation, TV, etc) untill 6 months later, when someone started using the checks with forged signatures and some sort of fake ID to make purchase and get cash at various branches of my bank. Even though the only credentials that were stolen were a bank account number, my name, and an old address, it still took a year and a half for everything to get fixed.
I’m not exaggerating. Not worth it. The police won’t investigate.