Re: Identity Theft - Credit Fraud - Officers Pls H
Jon-
Sorry to hear such news... identity theft is one of the most pervasive crimes that are truly difficult to resolve. To address several areas, I'll start with this:
[*] Victim's of identify theft have a reportable crime that falls under the jurisdiction of the law enforcement entity in which the victim resides. Depending on the Department, resources to investigate identity theft is not as prevalent as they are for crimes against persons, as opposed to crimes against property. Identity theft as it were. Regardless, this is the type of crime that needs to be followed up on with true determination by the victim. This may seem incredibly unfair, but the fact of the matter remains, only the victim and not the detective can and should provide personal identifying information and passwords to a creditor. This is absolutely critical in resolving credit card fraud in conjunction with identity theft.
For example: Any and all fraudulent accounts opened up in your mother's name, that you are aware of, should have a follow-up contact from the victim to the security department of the creditor. This will involve a long and detailed explanation of (1) How she identified the account as fraudulent; (2) How she can identify herself as the true person represented by her Social Security number, i.e. referencing the creditor to compare the information she provides to the information provided by one of the three major reporting credit agencies (Experian, Equifax, TransUnion); and (3) Closure of the fraudulent account. Creditors' security departments are aware of the need to go through this lengthy telephone process - both parties need to recognize that it is an essential step.
[*] All areas of credit must now be placed in a "monitoring pool" via the three major credit reporting agencies. That means establishing passwords for all open credit accounts to avoid the fraudulent change of information that would subsequently aid/benefit the criminal. The active monitoring will involve a notification to you, via telephone, mail, email of any changes or inquiries to your credit. This is an exceedingly important part of identifying and tracking any attempts at compromising your credit. Don't forget to renew this monitoring service via the three major creditors. It requires a specific request to do so. And speaking of requests...
[*] Contact the Social Security Administration to have your mother's Social Security Number flagged. The SSA needs to know that a police report was filed and a documented report number has been generated. They have a specific protocol for addressing outside attempts to use your mother's SSN. This request needs to be updated with the SSA every six months.
[*] Notify the Identity Theft Clearinghouse (877-I-D-T-H-E-F-T). Tomas beat me to it and posted the link. See above.
[*] Be prepared to continue with such efforts for the next year and a half, or longer. This requires a great deal of diligence on your behalf, but it is necessary to stay on the heels of those that would attempt to make further gains with your mother's established ID and credit.
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We also have the address that the cards are going to. Would it be beneficial to call the local police there? How about going to the post office and having the mail in my mother's name forwarded here? Or would that tip them off? Is that a bad thing?
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Do not call the local police where the billing is going to. This information needs to be given to the local authority where you originally reported the crime. This information is already available to the creditors, but the creditors must be informed of your current status in order for them to properly document this information for the investigators. Unfortunately, this address is one of several different locales made available for pickup for the suspects to have a temporary mail stop. Whatever else you do, do NOT go to the Post Office to have your mother's name/mail forwarded to that address. This would be what we consider to be a major No-No. You are actually assisting the suspects in verifying to the creditors that the address change is legitimate. You don't want to do that.
I'm not the premier expert in this kind of fraud... it is still a relatively new area of criminal investigation for which investigators have only been exposed to in the last 8 to 10 years. It is a constantly changing scheme that follows many different routes to achieve the same goal. Numerous police departments simply do not have a dedicated financial crimes section to deal with this. The suspects in these cases evolve from one person to the next, making it extremely difficult to identify and isolate an individual for prosecution. What I have written here is only the tip of the iceberg - the difficulty with which investigators and creditors alike face in such a daunting task is incredible. There are no easy solutions.
I wish I could help out more. I've had a family member go through this as well and it was the most frustrating event that I could have ever imagined. Four years later and there are still problems that crop up. Truly incredible.
Good luck, Jon.
-Jim
