HELD UPWITHOUTAGUN
I was stunned to learn how commonplace identity theft is today and how opaque the problem is. Normally, I wouldn’t have opened those envelopes, since they looked like junk-mail credit solicitations. This time, though, I hoped I would find some leads since they showed where the applications were filed. I forwarded this information to my local police department. Would finding the perpetrators be easy? Initially, I hoped so. We had a possible location and some names on the checks, although they were most likely fake, too. What if someone, however, was dense enough to put their own name on a fake check they was more chicanery beyond the bogus checks. About two weeks after the check theft occurred, I received notices in the mail from a credit union and credit card company in Maryland that my request for credit was denied. I hadn’t applied for credit in decades, so this was troubling. Were these the same individuals who cashed the fake checks? the forms I needed to complete to close the account and report the fraud. That took about an hour. Then, I still needed to go to the police and file a fraud report. For some reason, the bank wouldn’t do that for me. Although the bank restored the $8,000 from the cashed checks within a day or so, I was angry, and puzzled. Where did thieves get this account information? As I asked that question, I discovered there
Oh, I was also on high alert since my Internet security program twice alerted me that someone was trying to hack my e-mail (I changed the password and upgraded security levels). So I was warned, although the threat wasn’t specific. Still, I was targeted. As I dug deeper into this evolving problem, I was stunned to learn how commonplace identity theft is today and how opaque the problem is. Few institutions want you to know the extent of information- stealing operations. The good news is, my bank’s fraud algorithm caught the fake checks virtually immediately. But only because a check number had been used twice. When my banker called me and asked if I knew the names of the people to whom the checks had been written, my immediate response was “call the police.” I was en route to the South Side of Chicago at the time and drove back directly to my local bank branch. “Can you show me the checks?” I asked my banker. My name was right; the routing and account numbers were also correct. But something was off. There was filigree around the edges of the check. They had a design and logo I didn’t recognize. It looked like someone had cut and pasted a generic design and inserted the critical numbers. “These are not checks from your bank,” I told the banker calmly. “How did they get this information?” He shrugged his shoulders as he pulled up
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January 2020
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