Identity Theft – Identity Fraud

This week I was fortunate to be a presenter at the IRR national Fraud Conference. My session was on Identity Theft of Children and I think I provided a view of what the future holds for children whose identity is stolen, or those who have the skills and knowledge to create identity theft in the future.

Presenters and delegates were from many of the banks, and large companies who have dedicated e-security and fraud investigators. There was also a large presence from the Australian Federal Police and state police groups.

What stood out to me was how wide spread and how common identity fraud is. In many cases police have contacted those who have been scammed, yet many do not believe the police or the bank and still send large amounts of money to places like Nigeria. Nigeria is the number one country where these scams originate from and the concern is that soon, Nigeria will have a high speed free internet connection available to anyone, so expect a significant rise in identity fraud and scams.

Many of the criminals from Nigeria who have been caught often say that Australian’s are the most gullible of any country on the net, thus they target out country as often as possible.

Many of the credit cards involved scams by Asian groups who have skimmed credit cards. Never let your card out of sight when paying at a restaurant. Other areas of risk are providing credit card numbers to companies who run online gambling sites. Card numbers are often skimmed from these sites.

Another growing area is the use of innocent citizens to launder money through e-bay purchases or passing on money to an account for a 10% fee.

There were several case studies provided by police, which were fascinating, however due to confidentiality I am unable to provide the details on my blog. However it is fair to say that the amount of evidence that has to be collected and cross referenced is enormous and in some cases 2 or more police officers have spent two or more years, just putting together the evidence. Sometimes up to 5,000 documents.

One of the emerging areas of identity theft is from letterboxes. Utility statements (gas and power) are often stolen from letter boxes, falsifies and used at evidence for 100 point identification checks. More recently credit cards have been stolen from letter boxes, activated and used illegally. The advice was that everyone with a letter box should have a padlock on it.

When criminals are interviewed about crimes that use technology they say there are three reasons why they do it
• It is the easiest crime to commit
• It is the hardest crime to detect
• It has the lowest sentences if caught

Identity Fraud has created new victims. Those who have had their identity stolen and family members of victims, as sometimes it can take years to clear your name or families name and to get your credit rating back.