Financial Abundance

What is the world’s most expensive white collar crime? If you guessed drug trafficking you would be wrong. It is identity theft!

In 2008, the Federal Trade Commission predicts that 33 percent of all Americans will be the victim of some form of identity theft. When this occurs, it can easily take over 600 hours of your time to restore your identity and, depending upon the type of identity theft, it can become a personal nightmare for years.

You may not be aware that there are five types of identity theft. Most people think of financial identity theft, in which someone uses your credit cards or your bank accounts. However, of all identity theft, financial is only 22% of the total and is the easiest to fix.

The biggest type of identity theft is criminal or character identity theft. This occurs when someone uses your identity in the commission of a crime. When this happens, there may be a warrant out for your arrest that you know nothing about it until the police arrive at your door.

Medical Identity Theft is the fastest growing type. This occurs when someone uses your health insurance as their own. When this occurs, your Medical Information Bureau records can be completely altered. This type of theft can lead to you being declined for insurance coverage or, in an emergency situation, you could be administered the wrong medication or given the wrong type of blood. In some situations, Medical Identity Theft has been fatal.

Social Security is the fourth area for identity theft. This continually occurs as people come to work in the U.S. without a valid Social Security number. In one case, a woman found out that over 80 people were using her Social Security number.

The final area is Driver’s License Identity Theft. When someone has a driver’s license or state id with your information and their photo, they can open bank accounts, purchase vehicles, get speeding tickets and even DUI’s, and you can be held responsible for all of these activities.

Stealing and selling identities is a multi-billion dollar black market. Once an identity is stolen, it can be bought and sold over and over again, with multiple people in multiple locations using the same identities. Since we are all in many different databases, there is no way to prevent your identity from being stolen. You cannot control which data base with your personal information will be breached next.

The best identity theft protection is to have a service that you can rely upon to quickly restore your identity if it has been stolen. The service should include: 1) Monitoring – your accounts should be constantly monitored and you should be notified when accounts open in your name, your address changes or any other changes occur; 2) Restoration – having an experience person who will work on your behalf to restore your identity to its original form is critical; 3) Legal Protection – for emergency situations, the service should provide immediate access to attorneys who will write letters and make phone calls on your behalf.

No one is immune to identity theft. If you would like more information on what you can do to protect yourself and your family, please do not hesitate to call or email me.

This article was written by Peggy Goehringer, a Certified ID Theft and Risk Management Specialist. Peggy can be contacted by phone at 720-280-1068 or by email at peggygoehringer@aol.com