Credit card and identity theft strikes in all sorts of places, ranging from the mundane to the bizarre. One of the more peculiar instances of stolen credit cards involved a Nashville, Tennessee man who hired homeless to dig thru the garbage dumpsters of hotels near the Nashville airport to find disposed receipts with credit card numbers.
The man used the stolen credit card information to purchase anything from food to automotive parts and sell them to friends at half the price. A Pennsylvania woman, who stayed at a motel in Nashville last month, reportedly ended up with $12,000 in fraudulent charges on her credit card.
That’s chomp change compared to what Apple boss Steve Jobs is facing following a scam involving a gang of U.K. DJs, who used stolen credit cards to purchase their own music on iTunes. The scam involved nine people, who uploaded a total of 19 songs on iTunes, according to the U.K. Daily Mail. Using 1,500 stolen credit cards, the fraudsters then downloaded tracks to the tune of £460,000 ($735,000), netting them about £200,000 ($320,000) in bogus royalties from iTunes and Amazon.com. The number of downloads even boosted the position of the songs in the music charts! The scam was eventually unraveled through a joint investigation between British e-crime police and the FBI.
As colorful as these stories are, they hide the fact that credit card theft and identity theft most often strikes in more mundane places, and often where you least expect it. Almost half of all instances of identity theft originate with relatives, friends and neighbors. This type of fraud costs more time and money; and costs to victims are often higher.
Credit card and identity theft involving family members take many forms. An ex-spouse may, for example, use the social security number of one of his children (living with the mother) to open credit cards and make charges without paying them off. A room mate, cleaning lady, or friend could go through your papers and finds your social security number and use it to apply for new credit cards. A family member might find an unused credit card in a drawer and, unbeknownst to the cardholder, proceed to rake up high credit card charges on the account.
When family members or friends are involved, victims often hesitate to report it, hoping that the family member will make good on the charges and pay them off. The issues confronting victims of credit card theft in such instances are very complex: No one wants to report friends or family members to the police, nor to prosecute them to get them to pay off the debt.
Unfortunately, in such cases, most of the time victims adopt a wait-and-see attitude, hoping that the perpetrator will make good on the debt. In far too many cases, however, this doesn’t happen, and the victim ends up being on the hook for the debt, in many cases creating long-term economic hardship.
If you or someone you know is a victim of credit card or identity theft involving a family member or friends, what should you do? Your best bet, if you want to avoid being on the hook for the debt yourself is to file a police report, just like you would in a regular case of ID theft. Filing a police report is only a first step, and it’s not the same as pressing charges against the perpetrator, but it is an important step to take to clear your name.
The other alternative is to approach the credit card issuer or other companies involved, explain to them what happened, and see if they are will to work with you to reach a resolution without police involvement. Most companies, however, will be less likely to cooperate, if there is not a police report involved.
The benefits of filing a police report are many. It will give you protection under federal and state laws as a victim of identity theft, and this means that you will not be on the hook for the debt. In contrast, if you are aware of the fraud for a while and do nothing to stop it, it will appear suspect. If you eventually then do try to clear the fraud activity, you could run the risk of being considered an accomplice or co-conspirator.
For more information, see this article about How to Protect Yourself from Credit Card Fraud. If need to report identity theft, see the following article:
