Stay on guard: Identity theft can happen to anyone

By By Kathy Aney
The East Oregonian

Erica Sandoval knows firsthand that just about anyone is vulnerable to identity theft. Sandoval of the Hermiston Police Department trains the public about how to thwart criminals as the department's crime prevention officer. But being an expert in crime prevention and criminal behavior didn't save her from becoming a victim.

One day, Sandoval noticed a couple of strange withdrawals on her bank statement. "The first was a $12 charge from a make-believe company," she said.A subsequent charge increased the damages to $210 before she noticed the withdrawals. "They were quick about it - both withdrawals happened within a week's time," she said. "I can only imagine, if I hadn't caught it, it would have continued."

Sandoval was savvy enough to monitor her statements closely and alert her financial institution. She caught the fraud quickly and her bank replaced the cash. But sometimes it doesn't work out that way. If a thief gets ahold of your personal information, they can rack up huge bills that can become your responsibility and threaten your credit rating.

Identity theft comes in many forms. Shoulder surfing, skimming, phishing and dumpster diving - they are some of the myriad ways identity thieves separate you from your hard-earned cash. Shoulder surfing happens when someone looks over your shoulder to see your personal identification number as you type it in at an ATM. Skimmers use electronic devices that record data from the magnetic strip when a person swipes their debit or credit card and transmit the information to another location where it is re-encoded onto fraudulently made credit cards. Dumpster divers rummage through trash looking for bank and credit card statements and pre-approved credit card offers. Phishing is posing as a bank or other business and requesting personal information such as one's date of birth or social security number. E-mails sometimes direct the person to a certain Web site that has no connection with the business but looks genuine.

Identity theft, however, isn't limited to the old favorites. The manager of a Subway restaurant in St. Helens recently was charged with 40 counts of identity theft when she allegedly stole employment applications from Subway and gave them to a man accused of stealing identities. Sandoval said the Hermiston Police Department sees plenty of identity theft, mostly in the form of check fraud. Thieves sometimes cruise mailboxes, stealing checks and altering them using a technique called check washing. "They're able to wash the written ink down to where they can write over it," she said. "They can write it out to whomever and for whatever amount they want. "The check thieves sometimes are fairly brazen. "They'll go to merchants who don't routinely ask for identification and write checks," said Rita Rosenberg, vice president of operations at Pendleton's Columbia River Bank. Sometimes they even make checks out to themselves and deposit them into their personal accounts.

Sandoval and Rosenberg both urged people with public mailboxes to use extra caution. "You can have checks mailed to your financial institution and pick them up there," she said. People can make it tougher for thieves by having only the minimum information printed on checks. There's no need, Rosenberg said, to have driver's license numbers or social security numbers on checks. "Make the merchant ask for your driver's license number," she said. Don Daggett, senior vice president at Banner Bank in Hermiston, admonished against keeping Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) in wallets or next to your computer at home. "Don't keep your PIN number on a sticky note on your computer or written on your blotter or tucked under your keyboard," he said.

All three experts recommended careful monitoring of checking accounts, keeping PINs to oneself and checking credit reports. Prevention, they agreed, is preferable to cleaning up the damage later. "It takes a person at least - at the minimum - 30 hours to clean up the smallest identity theft," Sandoval said. Large ones can take months of forms, telephone calls and hair pulling. HPD's Web site has a downloadable "Identity Theft Victim's Packet" with forms to fill out and advice about who to call and things to do, such as closing accounts. It also advises what documents to gather in order to start an investigation.

Sandoval's fraudulent debit card charge is a fairly common type of identity theft and usually involves a small electronic charge followed by a larger hit. Often, it happens fast, but not always. "Sometimes they'll wait four or five months before they make their next move," Rosenberg said. If you notice something amiss, Rosenberg said, do what Sandoval did. "When you see that first small charge go through, cancel your card and let your financial institution know. "If you do find yourself the victim of identity theft, you can take a certain amount of solace in knowing you aren't alone. Consumer Sentinel, which tracks identity theft for the Federal Trade Commission, received more than 800,000 fraud complaints in 2007 and 32 percent of those were identity theft complaints. The majority of the complaints involved credit cards and most involved electronic funds transfers. Metropolitan areas reported a higher rate of identity theft activity with Napa, Calif.; Madera, Calif.; and Greeley, Colo.; with the highest rates per capita.