Id Theft

Regarding your July 28 editorial, "A Troublesome Number": As one who has had his identity stolen, I can tell you that the solution is a multifaceted one that requires more interest by law enforcement and corporate America than exists today. In my case, my identity was stolen to get a telephone line. Although I was able to correct the billing (no small chore, I must tell you) I still couldn't get anyone to make these people stop using my name or pay for their crime. I went to the police requesting that they act under the laws governing fraud (perpetrated upon the phone company)

The letter from debt collector Resurgent Capital Services arrived at my home the other day. Enclosed was a bill for $2,852.56, originally run up in the 1990s on a Citibank credit card. The name on the account: Derrick Davis. That would be the same Derrick Davis who stole my identity about 15 years ago. The same Derrick Davis whom I tracked down in Connecticut nearly a decade ago and handed over to law enforcement. The same Derrick Davis who was found guilty of Social Security fraud and deported to his native Jamaica.

Dear Liz: My cousin had his house broken into a little over a year ago. A lot of things were taken, but insurance replaced most of what he thought was missing. This year after he filed his return he was contacted by the IRS, which told him that a return using his information had already been filed and the refund check cashed. The IRS is investigating the situation now, but I really worry about what is going to happen to his Social Security in the future if someone else is using his numbers or those of his children.

Dear Liz: My cousin had his house broken into a little over a year ago. A lot of things were taken, but insurance replaced most of what he thought was missing. This year after he filed his return he was contacted by the IRS, which told him that a return using his information had already been filed and the refund check cashed. The IRS is investigating the situation now, but I really worry about what is going to happen to his Social Security in the future if someone else is using his numbers or those of his children.

It would make for a bad separated-at-birth joke if the alleged thief hadn't stolen almost $1.4 million in an identity-theft case targeting one of Southern California's wealthiest men. A man who looks nothing like Orange County real estate magnate Donald Bren allegedly walked into the Cerritos branch of East West Bank, opened accounts in Bren's name and deposited a $1.4-million federal tax-refund check stolen from Bren, according to a criminal complaint...

Prosecutors charged 54 employees of a Valencia music reproduction business with identity theft Monday in what the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said appeared to be a massive tax evasion scheme that company managers should have detected. A search warrant executed last week led to the arrests of 55 of L&M Optical Disc West's 200 or so employees and the charges of using false documents to obtain employment against all but one of those arrested.

The State Department plans to improve technology that will be embedded in new U.S. passports after tests showed that information in the documents could be vulnerable to identity theft. The agency said it would include new high-tech security features that would minimize the risk of identity theft -- even if the change delays plans to start issuing the passports to new applicants later this year.

Heidi Anderson didn't know much about identity theft until her Christmas 2001 shopping trip to Victoria's Secret, where a cashier said her store card -- which she had used only once before -- was over its limit. A check of her credit reports revealed the depth of Anderson's misfortune: Using her name and driver's license number, someone had opened 33 charge accounts and run up more than $30,000 in debt.

The former chairman of the Escondido Planning Commission pleaded not guilty to 66 criminal charges, including manufacturing methamphetamine, identity theft and forgery. Bruce Quick entered his plea Thursday in San Diego Superior Court. Quick, 44, was arrested May 25 after police found a boxed methamphetamine lab, forged identification cards and checks, firearms and stolen property during a search of his business.

After someone used Robert Nighan's credit card to charge $2,000 worth of golf clubs in California, the insurance executive got an idea. Nighan -- who doesn't golf and lives in Hartford, Conn. -- figured out a way to legally make crime pay: Sell an insurance policy to protect against identity theft. "I was involved in our crime insurance division at the time," said Nighan, a vice president of insurer St. Paul Travelers Cos.

Julian Bermudez noticed something new on his latest Citibank credit card bill. Down at the bottom, right beside where he's supposed to fill in the amount of his payment, was a box to be checked if he wants to sign up for Citi's Watch-Guard Preferred security service at a cost of $5.95 per month. And the box was already checked. "I don't like someone saying yes for me," said Bermudez, 37, of Cypress Park. "That's so not cool. " What's also not cool is that you have to dig deep to find out who's really behind this Watch-Guard Preferred thing and to discover that the company offering the ID theft protection has had to shell out millions of dollars in settlements with state attorneys general.

NEW YORK -- A longtime Newark Liberty International Airport security worker pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges of stealing the identity of a man slain 20 years ago to conceal his illegal immigration status -- a case that has embarrassed an airport already under scrutiny for security lapses. The man whom police identified as Bimbo Oyewole, but who had lived and worked as Jerry Thomas since 1992, had his first court hearing in Essex County, N.J., a day after his arrest. He pleaded not guilty to identity theft and was being held on $250,000 bail, according to the Associated Press.

The hacking of a credit card processing company last week, with more than a million people's card numbers potentially stolen by identity thieves, highlights yet again how little privacy we enjoy in the digital age. It also highlights — yet again — how hard it can be to find out details of a security breach. William LeGro of Silver Lake is typical of a lot of people who frequently shop online. He knows that he usually has to run a gantlet of hackers and scammers to get what he wants.

A woman who faced identity theft charges for allegedly creating a fake Facebook page to trash her ex-boyfriend -- a police officer whose false status updates described him as "scum with a gun" with a penchant for drugs, booze and prostitutes -- could have charges dropped after changing her legal tactic. Dana Thornton, 41, of Belleville, N.J., agreed Monday to enter a pretrial intervention program that will require her to visit a probation officer and undergo psychological counseling for a year, the Star-Ledger reported.

As most folks start preparing to file their income tax returns, the IRS and the Justice Department began unveiling their annual reminders of what happens to those who don't.  The Internal Revenue Service said Tuesday that federal authorities in an extensive sweep across 23 states last week charged 105 people of fraud and identity theft in connection with filing false returns to try to obtain refunds. “ID theft is a growing problem all across the country, and we've come to find out that the tax system isn't immune,” said IRS spokeswoman Anabel Marquez.

You can't know how big a hassle it is to have your identity stolen until some scammer enters your life and starts taking over. Michael Kalbs and his wife, Judy Rosen, learned this the hard way recently when they discovered that someone was applying for -- and receiving -- credit cards in Rosen's name and running up thousands of dollars in bills for gas and other everyday purchases. Then they had to spend weeks untangling the mess with various banks, businesses and credit reporting companies.

The federal government, in its first comprehensive look at identity theft, found that the crime has reached epidemic proportions -- touching nearly 5% of adult Americans each year and costing banks, businesses and consumers upward of $50 billion annually. About 9.9 million individuals were victimized in 2002 and more than 27 million have been hit by identity theft in the last five years, according to a Federal Trade Commission study released Wednesday.

A key player in a Ventura County identity theft ring will spend the next year in jail as part of a plea agreement, authorities said Thursday. Nearly 800 people, including a federal judge in Santa Barbara, had credit cards, bank account numbers or Social Security numbers stolen from home mailboxes or had receipts taken from a Ventura hotel, according to law enforcement officials. The information was allegedly stolen over a period of months ending in June, officials said.

Gary Koop wondered whether he was being scammed when he received an official-looking letter from Health Net the other day warning that the insurance company had experienced a major security breach. The insurer offered Koop two years of credit monitoring and fraud protection to reduce the risk of identity theft. "Like everyone else, I get a lot of free offers in the mail," the Manhattan Beach resident told me. "It looked like they were just trying to sell me something. " Nope — the letter's legit.

It would make for a bad separated-at-birth joke if the alleged thief hadn't stolen almost $1.4 million in an identity-theft case targeting one of Southern California's wealthiest men. A man who looks nothing like Orange County real estate magnate Donald Bren allegedly walked into the Cerritos branch of East West Bank, opened accounts in Bren's name and deposited a $1.4-million federal tax-refund check stolen from Bren, according to a criminal complaint...