Identity Theft -- What recource do YOU have

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission says that identity theft is its number one source of consumer complaints - 42 percent of all complaints, in 2001.

“Every 79 seconds, a thief steals someone's identity, opens accounts in the victim's name and goes on a buying spree."
-CBSnews.com, 1/25/2001

Something is amiss; you distinctly remember having more money at the end of the month. Sifting through your bank statements you notice things that just don't add up. (You mean you don't quite remember buying a villa in Spain?)

Maybe not even that, maybe it's just a phone bill that could easily wrap around your car (twice) or your Paypal account suffering from a mysterious lack of funds.

If your bank balance is inexplicably low, or filled with erratic bank statements or your phone bills have been strangely loaded with calls you don't recall making you may have become the victim of identity theft. Anyone with sufficient information about your person is capable of doing severe harm to you for their own personal gain.

And once your credit card number, social security number or other personal information falls into the hands of strangers there's no telling what those people could do in your name.

All of this is considered identity theft. And if you have an Internet connection you're almost 200% more likely to become the victim of identity theft than someone who doesn't.

But rather than discussing why we of all people just became the victim of identity theft we will focus on the things to do to solve our problem with as little financial damage as possible.

To resolve our problem with the least amount of hair loss or wrinkles (whichever the case may be) we will take a look at the following basic steps:

1. Dealing with the problem
2. Don't pay the bills
3. Inform the required authorities
4. Inspect evidence
5. Prevention for future events
6. Write a victim statement
7. Get legal assistance


Dealing with the problem

First of all the key is not to let the problem get to us. This may be easier said than done but we will get substantially more benefits from investigating and working to solve our problem than to wallow in self-pity.

If the problem has been continuing a while it is critical to get support from friends and family to provide a good basis to make the changes necessary to bring order back to chaos.

Don't pay any bills / Contest the bills

Oddly enough this rule is often broken. Don't pay any bills that you are sure you didn't cause yourself. If the credit companies attempt to investigate your non-payment this can only prove useful to your case.

Cutting the identity thief away from your resources will more often than not result in a panic 'hide and run' tactic on behalf of the identity thief.

Inform the required authorities

It is important that you inform your local authorities of the crime. Even though they can rarely do more than to make a report it is important to have things on file should this ever be required. The local authorities may also be able to provide some helpful advice.

Contacting the necessary credit reporting companies of the fraud problem is also important (i.e. Experian (formerly TRW), Equifax and TransUnion).

This will tag all your financial activities with a Fraud alert putting you under closer supervision which will hopefully lead to the capture of the identity thief.

Inform banks, phone companies, energy companies and practically everything that you may have financial obligations to. With many identity thefts the problem will sometimes spread from your phone company to your bank with the information the identity thief is able to obtain through your phone records.

Inspect evidence

Inspect any and all bank statements or phone bills tied to the problem. Determining when and how the problem has started will not only give you an idea how big the problem is but also when it started.

Make copies of this evidence and make sure it is seen by the proper instances.

As with so many things in life, when it comes to dealing with governments and other official instances it is better to have too much paperwork than too little.

Prevention for future events

Change passwords, banks, bank accounts, phone providers and anything else you expect to be tied into the problem.

Especially Internet passwords are often underrated and in many cases is the origin of the problem. It is better to get used to a new bank account number then to not have anything in your bank account.

Set yourself up in a situation where most of your transactions and important decisions have to be checked and signed by you. Even if this adds a substantial amount of paperwork to your desk every month it will help you keep track of the exact course of your life.

Write a victim statement

Writing an exact account of what happened, the scale and every detail of the problem will allow you to use it as a statement for legal purposes. More often than not the police will be able to help you with creating this statement and can often mean the difference between getting nothing back of what you lost and something to everything.

Get legal assistance immediatly

Some of us will go through great extents avoiding legal assistance. The truth of the matter is that legal assistance will often provide us information with many of the aspects and potential problems when dealing with our identity theft problem.

From advice to handling contact with officials and writing the victim statement legal advice can often prove to be a relatively inexpensive investment considering the results.