Identity theft - the clean upForensic Focus - February 2009 |
New Zealand is starting to experience more and more cases of identity theft, and while this type of offending is nothing new to law enforcement professionals, the effect and stress it has on victims is significant.
The theft itself involves offenders obtaining personal information of victims and then using the information to obtain unauthorised benefits such as loans, credit cards and accounts. Offenders obtain the information they need from the workplace, home or on-line.The fraudulent activity not only adversly affects the victim’s credit record but also causes months or years of uncertainty - "how much does this person know about me?" Another problem for the victim is that they don’t find out about the offending until the fraud has occurred and a debt collector comes knocking.
If you ever become a victim of identity theft, you can be sure that there is no perfect process to follow in order to clear your name, it’s just a matter of working through the process to get to the other side.
The big question is – how do you fix it?
You first need to convince the creditor that it wasn’t you, so you ask yourself, what is it going to take to make them understand me? How long is this going to take? How much is it going to cost me? Will they believe me or have they ‘heard it all before’? Maybe if I show them it wasn’t my handwriting? What is my alibi? Maybe if I make a police complaint? – Will they be able to do anything with their current resourcing issues? How do I know I have located all the fraudulent accounts? Will the offender continue to use my personal information?
These are just a few issues that create further headaches for the victims. While it’s not impossible to clear your name in a timely manner, chances are you will need to be prepared to invest a large amount of time and demonstrate patience when dealing with the institutions involved.
The basics steps required to clear your name include:
- Locate the institutions that have been compromised. A credit check would assist with locating these.
- Make contact with those institutions and work through fixing the problem together. The length of time required for this process will be determined by the volume of information that you have.
- Regularly check your credit record. While unlikely any further fraud will be committed it just may prove useful in offering you a higher level of confidence and assist with early detection should your identity be compromised again.
For more information please contact:
Sam Labone
Manager, Forensics