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Technology and Easy Credit Give Identity Thieves an Edge
By JOHN LELAND and TOM ZELLER Jr.
Published: May 30, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/30/us/30identity.html?_r=2&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
PHOENIX — In a Scottsdale police station last December, a 23-year-old
methamphetamine user showed officers a new way to steal identities.
His arrest had been unremarkable. This metropolitan area, which includes
Scottsdale and Phoenix, has the highest rate of identity theft complaints in
the nation, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Even members of the
Scottsdale police force have had their identities stolen.
But the suspect showed officers something they had not seen before. Browsing
a government Web site, he pulled up a local divorce document listing the
parties' names, addresses and bank account numbers, along with scans of
their signatures. With a common software program and some check stationery,
the document provided all he needed to print checks in his victims' names —
and it was all made available, with some fanfare, by the county recorder's
office. The site had thousands of them.
The data were not as rich as some found in stolen mail or trash bins. But
for law enforcement officials here, this was another turn in a cat-and-mouse
game in which criminals have outpaced most efforts to stop them.
"We're trying to keep up with the technology," said Lt. Craig Chrzanowski,
who runs Scottsdale's property crimes division, including a computer crimes
unit started two years ago. "But they're getting a lot better."
In an economy that runs increasingly on the instantaneous flow of
information and credit — aggressively promoted by banks and credit card
companies despite the risks — Phoenix and its surrounding area provide a
window on one of the system's unintended consequences.
According to a Federal Trade Commission survey in 2003, about 10 million
Americans — 1 in 30 — had their identities stolen in the previous year, with
losses to the economy of $48 billion. Subsequent surveys, by Javelin
Strategy and Research, a private research company, found that the number of
victims had declined to nine million last year but that the losses had risen
to $56.6 billion.
In Arizona, one in six adults had their identities stolen in the last five
years, about twice the national rate, according to the Javelin survey.
Arizona officials have responded with a preventive mantra: shred all
documents and avoid giving Social Security numbers or bank account numbers
to strangers over the telephone or the Internet. The State Legislature has
passed tougher penalties for people caught stealing or trafficking in stolen
identities.
But the real problem, many officials and consumer advocates say, lies
elsewhere. In recent years banks have campaigned energetically to extend
more credit to more people with fewer hassles, and retailers and consumers
have embraced instant, near-anonymous access to credit.
Last year a group of prosecutors, law enforcement officers and security
executives from banks and credit card associations met to discuss ways of
curbing identity theft. The group had plenty of ideas, including PIN numbers
or fingerprint verification for all credit card purchases and a ban on
mailings that include blank checks.
But all ran counter to the promotional campaigns of banks and, banks say, to
the desires of consumers.
"There's a disconnect between corporate leadership at financial institutions
and their security departments," said Brad H. Astrowsky, a former prosecutor
who was part of the group. "Marketing people are ruling the day in banking.
They can do things to fix the problem, but they have no incentive and
motivation to do it. Preventing something from happening is a cost. What's
the benefit? It's hard to quantify."
A Hot Spot for Thieves
Several factors converge to make Arizona a hot spot for identity theft.
Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, is one of the fastest-growing
counties in the nation, according to the Census Bureau, and its growth
exaggerates trends that exist in many communities: a mobile population and
high numbers of immigrants and retirees. It also has a heavy traffic in
methamphetamine.
Methamphetamine users, whose binges keep them up for days in a row, have the
time to sort through trash or old mail for Social Security numbers, bank
account numbers or other identifying information, said Andrew P. Thomas, the
county attorney. Dealers trade drugs for stolen identities that they use to
launder their profits. Nearly half the identity theft cases in Mr. Thomas's
office have a connection to methamphetamine, he said.
At the same time, he added, "More than half of the illegal immigrants
entering the U.S. come through Arizona," creating a market for fraudulent
Social Security numbers and driver's licenses.
Though Arizona passed the nation's first identity theft law in 1996, law
officers say they are fighting a crime that is as swift and adaptive as the
economy it exploits.
The newest wave of thefts here involves copying the magnetic strip from a
victim's credit card onto the back of another. When thieves use the doctored
cards, the transactions are charged to their victims' accounts. "Even if the
cashier asks for my driver's license, the name on the front is going to
match," said Todd C. Lawson, an assistant attorney general in Phoenix who
specializes in identity theft prosecutions.
The machine to copy the magnetic strip, Mr. Lawson added, is the one nearly
every hotel in America uses to recode room key cards.
And the county's Web site, which earned a place in the Smithsonian's
permanent research collection on information technology innovation, has made
Social Security numbers and other information, once viewable only by
visiting the county recorder's office, accessible to anyone with an Internet
connection. Police officers and prosecutors in Phoenix knew of just two
cases involving public records, but most victims do not know how their
identities are stolen.
For local law enforcement, pursuing even low-tech, small-time thieves is
often complicated and expensive. The victim could be in Arizona, the thief
in another state and the transactions spread all over the world. "If someone
goes on the Internet and buys goods from Bangladesh, do you call witnesses
from Bangladesh?" asked Barnett Lotstein, a special assistant county
attorney.
Mr. Lawson said, "I don't think we prosecute 5 percent of it."
On a recent afternoon, Lt. Russ Skinner, who runs the county sheriff's
computer crimes division, hefted three vinyl binders onto a wooden table.
For the detectives in his unit, this is what the "crime of the 21st century"
looks like: photographs of litter-strewn hotel rooms, and of a 33-year-old
woman in various stages of methamphetamine-fueled decline.
When detectives caught up with her last August, after nearly three months of
investigation, the woman was paying other users to steal mail for her —
especially preapproved credit offers — and had parlayed those into credit
cards or fraudulent accounts in 46 different names. She had secured housing,
utilities and a series of small online loans in her victims' names.
"She wasn't the smartest or the most creative," Lieutenant Skinner said.
"She just knew how to get it done."
A Connection to Drug Use
In the past, a drug user who needed money might go into a convenience store
with a gun, Lieutenant Skinner said. "They're on the surveillance camera.
They might get shot. They might get stopped in the parking lot for having a
broken taillight," he said. "Now they can just sit at a computer, no one
sees them and they can buy whatever they want."
Officials here began to notice a sharp rise in identity theft about five
years ago, said Paul K. Charlton, United States attorney for the District of
Arizona.
"The first tip-off was that we started to see a lot of mailbox break-ins by
tweakers," Mr. Charlton said, referring to methamphetamine users.
When police officers raided home methamphetamine laboratories that were then
proliferating on the outskirts of town, they found stacks of stolen mail or
notebooks filled with credit card information. They also found thieves were
using acetone, an ingredient used in methamphetamine production, to "wash"
the ink off checks, a simple means of identity fraud.
These small laboratories lend themselves to identity theft rings, said John
C. Horton, a White House aide in the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
In a laboratory, one or two people typically have some technical knowledge,
and others specialize in procuring materials.
Identity theft rings follow the same pattern, with a handful of grunts
stealing mail for one person who knows how to turn the information into
credit cards or checks, Mr. Horton said. "It doesn't seem to happen with
cocaine or heroin because we don't produce heroin and cocaine in this
country," he said. "Meth production is to some degree a social activity in
the same way as identity theft."
Though the Arizona police have closed many laboratories, the identity theft
rings have survived or multiplied.
From its commercial downtown, Phoenix extends in a patchwork of satellite
communities, some so new that the highway connecting them does not appear on
the maps in the central post office. In the mid-1990's, as Phoenix's
population boomed, the Postal Service created cluster mailboxes that served
whole housing developments. Like other conveniences associated with the
city's rapid growth, the boxes have proved a boon for identity thieves.
"You can jimmy one open and get everyone's mail at the same time," said Mr.
Lawson, the prosecutor. After numerous break-ins, the Postal Service has
spent $12 million on reinforced mailboxes, but many communities here still
have the old ones.
Some thieves drive around neighborhoods with their laptops until they find a
resident's unsecured wireless Internet connection. If the police investigate
a fraudulent purchase, they will trace it to the customer with the
connection, not to the thief who placed the order.
Since 1994, a Phoenix security officer named Bob Hartle, frustrated by his
own experience with identity theft, has led an often lonely campaign for
tighter controls on organizations that handle people's data, and curbs on
the way credit card companies, banks and stores grant credit.
Data breaches in the last year have exposed the personal information of more
than 80 million Americans, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a
nonprofit organization that follows identity theft. On May 3, a thief stole
computer disks holding the names, Social Security numbers and other
information of 26.6 million veterans from the residence of a Department of
Veterans Affairs employee who had taken the data home without authorization.
In most states, organizations are not required to tell consumers if their
identities have been compromised.
"It's the sharing of data without necessary safeguards that enables this
crime to grow as it has," said Torin Monahan, an assistant professor of
justice and social inquiry at Arizona State University. "The response is
always 'protect yourself, go to these workshops, get a shredder.' That
diverts attention away from the extent to which these are systemic
problems."
Seventeen states have passed "credit freeze" laws enabling consumers to
prevent banks or credit agencies from issuing new accounts in their names.
But here, as in other states, businesses have successfully opposed such
legislation.
"They're fighting us tooth and nail," said Mr. Hartle, who runs ID Theft
Services Inc., a nonprofit organization that provides free help for victims.
"Banks, credit card companies, retailers want to make it easy to buy," Mr.
Hartle said. "They write off identity theft as a cost of doing business. So
whenever legislation comes up that's going to cost them money, they throw
themselves against it."
Nessa E. Feddis, senior federal counsel for the American Bankers
Association, said freezing credit could create problems for consumers,
especially if they needed to get a new cellphone or change residences in a
hurry.
"A credit freeze is one of those things that sounds like a good idea, but
people don't realize how often they need to use their credit report," Ms.
Feddis said. "There's a balance between security and convenience."
She continued, "We all want fraud to go away, but we don't want to take 20
extra minutes every time we do online banking. We like buying airline
tickets online, but there's a risk."
Though consumers worry about identity theft, Ms. Feddis said, banks absorb
most of the losses.
Credit card companies point to new monitoring systems that have reduced loss
from fraud as a percentage of overall transaction volume. At Visa, fraud
accounted for 7 cents per $100 in transactions, down from 18 cents per $100
in 1990. "We could have a system reducing fraud to zero basis points, but it
wouldn't meet what consumers are demanding," said Rosetta Jones, a Visa
spokeswoman. "We need to deliver what consumers want in a way that is
secure."
Fritz M. Elmendorf, a spokesman for the Consumer Bankers Association,
described a chess match with identity criminals. For example, banks now
protect prescreened credit card offers with address-matching technologies
that make it harder for thieves to have cards sent to a drop address, Mr.
Elmendorf said.
"There are more tools today than ever to ascertain the identity of a credit
applicant," he said. "And the industry can point to a lot of things — some
of which they won't talk about in detail — to validate people."
In the community of Chandler, southeast of Phoenix, Bobby Joe Harris
questioned the efforts of businesses and banks to protect his identity.
Mr. Harris, 60, is a retired police chief. His wife, Judy, is a retired bank
manager. Last December, Mrs. Harris was shopping at a Sam's Club store when
a cashier said their membership had been canceled. When Mr. Harris tried to
reactivate their membership in January, he learned that the store had issued
a new credit card on their account to a woman who had said she was the
couple's daughter.
"I don't have a daughter," Mr. Harris said. "I told the lady, 'I don't think
so.' "
In two phone calls, possibly working with a store employee, the thief had
raised the Harrises' credit limit to $10,000 from $3,500 and then to
$15,000, and had run up charges of $11,093. No one had called them.
"It was only by luck that we found out," Mr. Harris said.
Seeking Protection
Though like most consumer victims the Harrises did not have to pay the bogus
charges, they now pay $220 a year to LifeLock, a protective service that
started last September in Phoenix.
The company's core service is simple: Whenever a bank or other business
requests to look at a LifeLock subscriber's credit history, the company gets
a fraud alert asking to confirm that the customer applied for credit.
Federal law empowers consumers to get these alerts on their own, but they
must reapply regularly to one of the three companies that issue credit
reports.
Other companies offer different protections. None has had to prove that its
services are effective.
When the Maricopa County recorder's office began posting records online in
1997, it was one of the first in the country to do so. Since then,
legislatures in other states, including New York and Florida, have wrestled
with whether — or how — to make their information available online.
A law in Florida requires that all Social Security and financial account
numbers be stripped from online records by 2007, although new legislation
may delay that another year.
In Phoenix, the county recorder's office posts 8,000 to 10,000 documents a
day. Most are innocuous, but some, including divorce decrees and tax lien
records, have sensitive information.
"I'm not insensitive to people's fear," said Helen Purcell, the county
recorder. "I have the same fear. My information is out there, too." But it
is far too late to start editing Social Security numbers or other data from
the county Web site, she said. "We have 100 million documents out there
now."
In the absence of full security, Arizonans cling to what protections they
can. On a recent morning in Ventana Lakes, a development of older residents
northwest of Phoenix, Lois Owen and Joan Schanks joined a small procession
of neighbors to a community "shredathon" organized by the attorney general's
office and AARP. Since the first shredathon last fall, residents around the
state have carted 12 tons of paper to the mobile machines, in many cases
supplementing the shredding they do at home.
"It's a big relief," Ms. Schanks said as she watched 20 pounds of old bank
statements disappear. Yet even with the shredding, the residents here cannot
begin to estimate how many people have their personal information, or how
tempted any of those individuals may be to sell that information, Mr.
Lawson, the prosecutor, said.
"You can take all the precautions you want," he said. "But everyone's
exposed to a certain extent."
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