Mike Calip had to pinch himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.
It had been nearly three years since he and his wife first learned that their identities had been stolen. The Golays are now behind bars (she pled guilty to charges related to the theft; continues to fight the charges and is awaiting trial). But the Calips are still working to clean up the damage. They say they have spent hundreds of dollars on lawyers, notarized affidavits and even a private investigator to try and clear their names and to track down their imposters. They were unable to buy a home or even a new car. They had to be assigned new Social Security numbers and credit cards and open a new bank account.
And the Calips are still not sure how or why Conners and Golay–former friends of theirs–according to police got enough of their personal information to open a new bank account, obtain a Washington state driver’s license (in Mike’s name) and order and use new credit cards in the couple’s name. By the time the pair were arrested, prosecutors charge they had racked up thousands of dollars in bad checks, credit card charges and had even been issued speeding tickets–all in the Calips’ names–during a wild cross-country spending spree. Deputy prosecuting attorney Stefanie Collins say three banks have already submitted written reports documenting at least $16,000 in losses from the fraudulent checks and charges; the Calips estimate the final tally may be close to $60,000.
“It feels like someone took a part of you that you can’t get back,” says Tonya Calip. “I had thought, ‘That’s never going to happen to me,’ and then it did. And I realized it can happen to anyone.”
Last year, as many as 1.1 million Americans fell victim to the crime. The Federal Trade Commission says identity theft is the fastest-growing white-collar crime in America; complaints jumped by one third in the past year. In a study by the Government Accounting Office released this month, the Social Security Administration reported a five-fold increase in the numbers of allegations of Social Security number fraud from 1998 to the middle of 2001. The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (www.privacyrights.org) says the average victim is defrauded of some $18,000.
“It is a dramatically increasing crime in America with substantial loss for individuals, both monetary as well as the loss of creditworthiness and the time it takes to re-establish your credit,” says Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who has helped introduce legislation that offers more protection for consumers.
Identity theft is not a new crime, but widespread use of the Internet has made it easier than ever for criminals to obtain personal information and harder for authorities to track them down. The Calips, for instance, say they believe Carra Conners was able to set up a bank account in Tony’s name over the Internet and the phone and then used ATMs for transactions. A recent report by GartnerG2, a subsidiary of the research and advisory firm Gartner Group, found that one in 12 online consumers has been hit with identity theft, while one in six has been the victim of credit card theft. “It’s fairly easy to do for someone who is sophisticated. It’s not just about getting credit card information but personal information,” says Ken Kerr, a senior research analyst at GartnerG2.
What’s unusual about the Calips’ case is that their impostors are sitting in jail. Nine times out of 10, the thieves are not caught–and often not even identified–according to Linda Foley, executive director of the California-based Identity Theft Resource Center (www.idtheftcenter.org). “It is a high-profit, low-risk and low-penalty crime,” says Foley. “The problem is not so much with law enforcement; it’s the nature of the crime itself. It is a very difficult crime to investigate.”
Linda Foley was a victim of identity theft herself, but she was among the minority who knew her impostor–a former friend and employer. “When I was told I might be a victim of identity theft, my immediate response was ‘Say what?’ Most of us don’t think this crime can touch us,” says Foley. Even though the woman was caught, Foley says she will never feel completely safe again.
California, where the Identity Theft Resource Center is located, has the second highest rate of identity theft last year, behind the District of Columbia. Feinstein says she has been working on the issue for more than two years. Last year, Feinstein, along with fellow senators Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Charles Grassley (R-IA), introduced legislation that would mandate that companies get prior consent before selling or marketing someone’s personal information, prohibit the unauthorized display or sale of Social Security numbers and require credit card machines to truncate credit card numbers so only the last few digits are printed on receipts. The Identity Theft Prevention Act of 2001 would also place more responsibilities on the credit card issuers and credit bureaus to verify the information on credit applications. The bills are meeting some resistance from credit card companies and online retailers, but Feinstein says she remains optimistic. “It’s a very big issue … and one that has been on my front burner. [But] it takes a period of time for people to recognize that this is a real problem,” she says.
Victims run the gamut–from rich to poor, college-educated to high-school dropouts. Some are lucky enough to escape with just a few false credit card charges, like Laura Rosenberg. The Houston psychologist is meticulous when it comes to her finances, keeping dated receipts for all her purchases and reconciling her statements with her receipts each month. So she was stunned when she came home from a trip last year to find urgent messages on her answering machine from her bank, along with a letter asking that she call them immediately. When she did, she was told she had been a victim of identity theft but did not offer any more details as the crime was under investigation. The bank did not charge her for the activity on her bill, simply canceled her account and issued her a new card. But she was still shaken up.
“I thought, How could this happen to me? I am so responsible, so careful–I take a lot of precautions. I don’t buy things over the Internet, I only make small purchases,” says Rosenberg. “I haven’t had a problem since. But I was wary to use my card again because I thought, if it happened once, it can happen again.”
Foley recommends that consumers check their credit reports on a yearly basis and be very careful about giving out any personal information (“Your health club does not need to know your Social Security number”). She also recommends leaving the Social Security card at home and committing the number to memory instead.
But thieves don’t have to steal your wallet or break into your home to get personal information about you. Some pull it right out of the Dumpster–from discarded bank statements to health-insurance bills and credit card offers. After hearing about a number of such cases, Foley now shreds all sensitive information before she puts it in the trash. If the cost of a shredder seems high, find another way to make any sensitive information unreadable, she says. One former victim now soaks her bank statements and credit card offers in boiling water until they turn to pulp, before throwing them away.
That might seem a bit extreme, but there are plenty of identity-theft victims who say they wish they’d taken such precautions. “We shred everything; we no longer take any chances,” says Tonya Calip. “But a lot of people just don’t think about it until it’s too late. They say, ‘It will never happen to me.’ Well, this can happen to anyone whether you’re old, young, single, married–anyone.”
