name. These days, he'll say, wait a minute, I'll get a car loan in your name, wait a minute, I'll get a mortgage in your name, wait a minute, I'll assume your entire identity and get a job in your name and you'll have to pay the taxes.
Physical attributes like DNA are unassailable and unique to you. No criminal can steal them. But we have become the various numbers that have been assigned us, and, with modern technology, that makes us increasingly vulnerable. All a thief has to do is get hold of a single set of digits - your bank account, your credit card number, or especially your Social Security number - and he can take up residence in your life. If you have great credit, he suddenly has great credit.
Anyone with a Social Security number can become a victim - even a newborn baby or someone who's dead. Some identity thieves can pick your pocket for months and even years before they're detected. They know just how to keep a victim's suspicions at bay.
A Virginia couple was puzzled when a friend said he couldn't reach them because their number was unlisted. They knew they were in the book, but figured it was a lame excuse for not inviting them to a party. When they heard the same thing from another friend, they checked with the phone company. It said the husband had asked that the number be unlisted. They shrugged that off as some mix-up, until they got a call to verify that they wanted their new Visa card mailed to a different address. They had ordered no card and had no new address. They quickly got a credit report and found that someone had already obtained another card in their name and a cash advance against it. Then they got it. The identity thief had requested that their number be unlisted so creditors couldn't reach the couple.
Back in my criminal days, I engaged in identity theft of sorts. To be precise, I guess you could say that I engaged in profession theft. Although I never took on the identity of a living person - I never believed in crimes against the individual - I became a generic copilot and a lawyer and a doctor, among my guises. To pull this off took cleverness and perhaps a bit of a diabolical mind. You needed to be able to turn on the sweet grease and charm. I had to learn about airplanes and pilot lingo. I had to learn the law. I had to learn a suitable amount of medicine. I had to create believable IDs and acquire uniforms. I had to be able to stay cool under pressure.
Today, the identity thief can do what I did, and so much more, hiding behind numbers. No one tests his knowledge.
Identity theft is so new that it wasn't even formally recognized as a specific federal offense until 1998, when, prompted by growing evidence of the crime, Congress passed a law, the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act. And though I speak of it as the crime of the future, because of its potential, it already is an enormous problem. I've heard estimates that half a million Americans a year are victims.
Identity theft is a chilling crime because the perpetrator is innocent until proven guilty, while the victim is guilty until he proves himself innocent. Until you've been caught up in this crime, you can't imagine how hard it is to prove that innocence. It can be a nightmare of unimaginable proportions to get your credit and your identity back, if you ever fully do.
A HORSE OF MANY COLORS
The approaches taken by identity thieves vary a great deal. Most often, the thief is a total stranger, someone you've never seen and who has never seen you. But not always. A woman living alone in her own house took on a roommate for some added income and companionship. The roommate lived with her for nine months. She was amiable enough, and always paid her rent on time. One day she told the woman she had gotten a job offer out West, and so she would be moving. The woman was happy for her, and thought nothing of it.
A few weeks after the roommate left, the woman got a call from a bank officer. The officer said the bank had received her most recent mortgage payment, the same as always, but it hadn't received the payment for her second mortgage. "Second mortgage?" the woman