Word: theft
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Johnson knew that identity theft violates both state and federal laws, so he called the FBI and was forwarded to the Secret Service, which investigates counterfeiting and other types of financial fraud. An agent asked whether the case involved more than $25,000. Otherwise, he intimated, he had bigger fish...
...because of Sept. 11, but police say their response would have been pretty much the same had he called months earlier or phoned a precinct in Kansas City or Key West. In an age of instant credit, when you can apply online and start shopping within 30 seconds, identity theft has become an American epidemic. Calls to the fraud-victims help line at a national credit bureau have nearly doubled from the 522,922 received in 1997, and 86,168 identity-theft cases were reported to the Federal Trade Commission last year, making it the top consumer-fraud complaint. Because...
...that may change, as government and industry efforts converge to protect a staple of the U.S. economy: easy credit. Sept. 11 underscored the ways that terrorists use identity theft to slip into U.S. society and fund their operations. Investigators have linked several suspects to credit-card fraud, including the two men with box cutters who were arrested on a train Sept. 12. The terrorist convicted last year in a 1999 plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport used 13 identities lifted from the membership files of a Boston health club. Potential losses in Secret Service investigations jumped from...
Like most stories of identity theft, Johnson's is one of initial confusion and lingering anxiety. "How did someone get so much of my personal information, and what's to stop them from using it again?" he asks. "My Social Security number can go from criminal to criminal. I'm screwed for life...
This attitude is common at overburdened police departments across the country. At a special identity-theft task force in Los Angeles, each of the nine investigators handles nearly 600 active cases, with a simple case taking about 70 hours to investigate and more complex ones taking three times as long. Each of the nine specialists solves 30 to 40 cases a year, according to team member Ralph Richards. "We're making some headway, but it's a drop in the bucket," he says. "The chances of getting caught are much less than for the guy who steals your...