Identity theft is the fastest-growing, number one reported crime

Posted April 18, 2022

By Haley Moreschi and Ava Perry

Cub Investigative Reporters

Identity theft, the fastest-growing and number one reported crime, has been at an all-time high, extending beyond state borders and policies.

According to a survey taken in 2003 by the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, 9.9 million Americans were victims of identity theft in the past year. For the past four years, identity theft has been the most common white-collar crime reported to the FTC. The industry has sufficient motivation to address the problem from the results of a study that concluded $3 out of every $4 lost by community banks to check fraud was due to some form of identity fraud.

Though this is the most popular crime, accurate methods to identify and report it weren’t developed until 1997, meaning that many possible cases from the 1980s and 1990s were very likely unreported. In 1997, the FTC created a secure investigative and database tool called the Consumer Sentinel where 85% of the total victims of identity theft reported financial misuse, and the remaining 15% reported personal information use.

Nearly every branch of government, public agency, citizen, and business has a role in addressing identity theft. Many state governments are taking the lead to address this problem by establishing it as a priority.

The maximum penalty for identity theft is usually 15 years in federal prison, in addition to any fines and criminal loss.

Driver’s licenses are an easy target for identity thieves to gain personal information on their victims. State-issued driver’s licenses not only grant driving privileges, but are also used to board airplanes, open bank accounts, and apply for credit. This means that motor vehicle administrators have an important responsibility to verify applicants' identities to check for fraudulent activity. Though states carry this responsibility, law enforcement and financial institutions often fail to identify invalid driver’s licenses due to a lack of information. Similar to these records, states are responsible for keeping vital records and statistics, including records on marriages, deaths, divorces, and adoptions. Records most prone to error are death records due to the number of people involved, such as funeral directors, physicians, and medical examiners.

Identity theft crimes disproportionately affect the elderly due to their higher credit lines, greater home equity, and abundance of financial resources when compared to the younger population. According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, the number of incidents of identity theft among people over the age of 60 increased from 1,821 in 2000, to 5,802 in 2001.

Another concerning subject is the theft of personal information from the deceased. According to the National Association for Public Health Statistics and Information Systems, each year approximately 2.3 million deaths are processed. When a consumer dies, financial institutions are often not notified immediately and will keep an active credit file open for up to ten years, with no activity. States must report death information to the Social Security Administration, which then will notify the financial institutions. One prevention method that the younger generations can take to stop identity theft is to be careful on social media by using strong and secure passwords. Learning to never share your passwords with anyone and to keep certain information private will help the overall status of identity theft greatly decline. In this matter, the younger generations are more at risk of being victims of identity theft. These thefts are targeting the children, or teens, who may not even discover that their information has been stolen until several years later.

"I suggest keeping passwords safe by using unpredictable passwords and changing them often, using unique passwords for each account and service, using multi-factor authentication when offered, particularly on Google, Microsoft, or any Facebook accounts that can be used to sign into multiple different services," said DDSD Hardware/Software Technician Tom Pickering.

A website certification mark, an indicator on the organization’s home page signifying that the site has been verified secure by a qualified certification agency, is another way to prevent identity theft and determine the legitimacy of the website.

Internet openness, the rising frequency of credit card transactions, and general personal information carelessness make identity theft an intimidating subject for government officials, but many states are taking the lead to address the further-going problems, in hopes that someday identity theft won’t be as big of a crime.