Elizabeth Freitas is living proof that identity theft is alive and well and on Kaua‘i and can happen to even the most cautious person. On New Year’s Eve day last year, Freitas discovered that someone had stolen a check from
Elizabeth Freitas is living proof that identity theft is alive and well and on Kaua‘i and can happen to even the most cautious person. On New Year’s Eve day last year, Freitas discovered that someone had stolen a check from her Lihue home, wrote it to cash, forged her name on it as the signer and helped himself to $900 from her bank account.
The check was originally mailed to her with a pre-activated – and unrequested – credit card, that Freitas had cancelled immediately upon receipt. Normally she or her husband, former Kaua‘i police chief George Freitas, would have ripped such checks to shreds but this one apparently slipped through the cracks and was likely taken from their garbage.
“It makes you realize how easy it is,” said George Freitas. “It occurred so easily. In no time, someone has $900 of your money. It’s going to make me a little more paranoid. Junk mail will get torn into a million pieces before it leaves my hands from now on.”
Elizabeth Freitas, herself a retired police officer after 13 years on the force in Richmond, California, is thankful that the perpetrator wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box. Though he’d written the check payable to cash, he endorsed it on the back using his real name and deposited it into his own account at the bank.
The Freitases were lucky their loss was so easy to define. Most victims of identity theft suffer far worse consequences, in part because the crime is much more insidious, easier to perpetrate and harder to detect until long after the damage has been done, than most people realize.
Perfect Crime
Classic identity theft involves stealing a pre-approved credit card offer that has been discarded by the intended recipient. The thief activates the credit card. Then – this is the key point that sets ID theft apart from a straightforward theft – changes the mailing address on the account.
With his new identity and brand new credit limit, an ID thief can begin opening new accounts at will and spending freely – but certainly not paying the bills – while the victim remains unaware for months because the bills are going somewhere else, as are all the reminder and dunning notices.
Even the most diligent consumer who scours their credit card bills monthly looking for fraudulent purchases won’t suspect a thing because no evidence comes to them.
“To me it’s the perfect crime,” said Mel Rapozo, Kauai county councilman and co-owner of M & P Legal Support Services, a private investigative agency. “You’d never know (you are a victim) until you go to apply for credit. When they run your credit, all of a sudden you have all of these outstanding credit accounts. And then the fun begins.”
Rapozo, who gives lively and informative seminars around the island about ID theft, said that pre-approved credit card offers aren’t the only ammunition for ID thieves. Something as seemingly innocuous as a cable television or water bill in the wrong hands can lead to trouble.
“Certain applications require a utility bill to prove proof of residence,” he said. “So they can use that to set up new accounts.”
Stories abound of victims being unable to open new accounts, purchase cars or qualify for mortgages because of an identify thief’s activities undertaken in their name. When the victim discovers the deception, it feels like the harshest slap in the face.
“Most people don’t know they’re a victim, that’s the problem,” Rapozo said, noting that older folks who don’t often apply for new credit or refinance their homes could go many months before finding out what’s happening in their names.
“For example, the crook gets a traffic ticket (in the victim’s name) . . . doesn’t show up for court, so a bench warrant is issued,” and an officer shows up at the unsuspecting victim’s house to make the arrest.
Stolen From Mailbox
The trouble caused by a malicious stranger perpetrating ID theft costs on average $1,500 for out-of-pocket expenses and 175 hours to clean up, Rapozo said. The Federal Trade Commission estimates that one in eight adults in America have had their identities stolen – 27 million people in the past five years. At a rate of one new victim somewhere in the United States every 20-25 seconds, the FTC, calls ID theft the fastest growing high tech crime in the country.
But the scary part is that it’s not really all that high tech. Thieves find personal information in easily accessible locations that most trusting, law-abiding people wouldn’t even think of protecting: trash cans at home or at the post office and frequently from residential mailboxes.
Mike Hough’s identity theft nightmare began in textbook fashion – with theft of his incoming mail from his curbside mailbox outside his Wailua home during January 2003. “We’d had some occurrences of people hitting mailboxes with baseball bats (in the neighborhood) so we figured it was some idiot,” he said, explaining that he didn’t begin to suspect that any of his mail had been stolen until he began receiving excessive charges on his credit card.
Hough was fortunate that his thieves weren’t clever enough to change his mailing address so he was able to discover the theft relatively quickly. Nevertheless, he was required to pay the charges on his credit card bills.
After many hours on the phone gathering proof that he had not ordered nor received the items for which he was being charged, had to wait between 60 and 90 days to receive the appropriate credits back from his financial institutions.
Ironically, the day after contacting the post office about his mail theft, Hough received a flyer from the postal service recommending that residential customers install locking mailboxes to prevent just such an incident. In early 2003, Hough said, it was impossible to find a locking mailbox for purchase on Kauai and even more difficult to make sure that whatever he bought via the internet would conform to U.S. Postal Service regulations.
Earlier this year, Kapaa post office personnel removed rubbish cans from the lobby and posted notices warning customers of mail theft from the office. Few patrons heeded the warnings as evidenced by the daily piles of unwanted mail on the counter and strewn on the floor. Apparently giving up trying to protect people from themselves, the post office recently reinstalled the rubbish cans in the lobby.
“People go in the trash cans (and take mail),” said Steve, a Kapa‘a post office employee who would not give his last name. Even though Kaua‘i people may believe that mail theft only happens on the Mainland, “It’s no difference here,” he said.
That reality leaves Hough feeling disconcerted and “anger that people were purchasing things off our back instead of getting a job,” he said. “And a little bit of sadness that the crime wave across the country has reached this little enclave.”
Private investigator Rapozo said the only thing people can do is to protect themselves. “You just gotta be careful and assume that anything you send out can be seen by other people,” he said. “It’s just a pain in the okole.”
Look for Part 2 of this article in Saturday’s issue of The Garden Island
What to do if you believe you are a victim of identity theft:
- Contact all creditors by phone and in writing.
- Close out any accounts you believe have been tampered with and re-open the accounts with new PIN numbers.
- Call the Kaua‘i Police Department: 241-1711.
- Call the Social Security Administration Fraud Hotline: 800-268-0271.
- Call the Postal Inspection Service office: 808-423-3790.
- Call the Federal Trade Commission to report the incident: 1-877-IDTHEFT.
- Contact the Department of Motor Vehicles to see if another drivers license was issued in your name. If so, request a new license number and request a form to begin that office’s fraud investigation process.
- Contact the fraud departments of each of the three major credit bureaus and request that a “Fraud Alert/Victim Impact” statement be placed in your file.
- Order copies of your credit reports and review them thoroughly:
Equifax P.O. Box 105873 Atlanta, GA 30348-5873 Telephone: 1-888-766-0008
Experian Information Systems (formerly TRW) P.O. Box 949 Allen, TX 75013-0949 Telephone: 1-888-397-3742
TransUnion P.O. Box 390 Springfield, PA 19064-0390 Telephone: 1-800-680-7289
- Keep a log of all your contacts and make copies of all documents.
- Information provided by Mel Rapozo, co-owner of M&P Legal Support Services, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
For more information go to: http://www.usps.gov/postalinspectors
