“It looks like someone is trying to rob us of more than $10,000.”
That's the message my husband typed to me one Monday morning in October. By the time I wrote back he was on the phone with our bank. The previous weekend, someone came into our bank branch, pretended to be one of us, and took thousands of dollars from our checking account.
We believe that tens of millions of Americans are victims of identity fraud each year, where criminals steal bank and credit card numbers and use that personal information for illegal financial gain. I joined the group.
We were lucky in many ways, but most importantly, our bank paid back our losses within 36 hours.
What we've learned is that the many steps we take to protect personal data don't always work.
Experts recommend creating strong passwords with additional layers of authentication, changing them frequently, and not using the same password for multiple accounts.
You can also stop illegal activity in real-time by setting up text alerts on credit and debit cards for every transaction. You can also receive email alerts when someone attempts to change the email or address associated with your account.
You should have done all of these things and so did we, but they would not have prevented the fraud we experienced. Our data was already available for selection.
The number of hacks exposing Americans' personal financial information soared to an all-time high of 3,205 in 2023, according to the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center. This total includes breaches of companies across many industries, including healthcare, utilities, financial services, and transportation.
A well-known example of this is the massive Equifax data breach in 2017 that affected 147 million Americans, including us. This motivated us to freeze our Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion credit reports.
“Right now, all of our information is out there on the dark web,” Suzanne Sand, senior fraud and security analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research, told me. myself. “
“It takes a huge amount of time.”
Here's what else we learned: Knowing how to respond to these scams after they occur is also important and time-consuming.
Thanks to previous reporting on this topic, we knew we needed to act quickly. We checked our other accounts (bank accounts, credit accounts, retirement accounts) for suspicious activity. There was nothing. We then met at a local bank branch to close the old account, open another, and identify which transactions we would allow going forward.
It took over two hours and we weren't even close to finishing.
“Identity fraud takes a tremendous amount of time to solve, and people don't always have the time to do it,” Sand said.
Fortunately, my husband had the day off and spent the afternoon undoing the automated transactions from the old account and transferring them to the new account. I also took the day off from work and headed to the local police station to file a report to provide to other financial institutions in case of fraud elsewhere.
Our local police station immediately received our report. According to Eva Velasquez, CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center, identity theft cases are rare because they are so difficult to solve.
Several factors worked in our favor, she said. In New York State, the total amount stolen was ultimately $11,300, making the crime a Class D felony, which includes theft of more than $3,000 but less than $50,000.
The bank also gave him a copy of the withdrawal slip, which served as important evidence. The culprit made the withdrawals using my maiden name, even though each slip was misspelled. That's a name that hasn't been listed on my checking account for over 10 years.
The voucher also indicates where the withdrawal was made. Three bank branches in southern New Jersey, but none near New York City, where we regularly bank. That means the culprit was likely seen on the bank's surveillance tape.
“I'm sure that's led to an increase in their willingness to report, and we've made that a priority,” Velasquez said of police.
Receiving that report was more than what many fraud victims receive. But five months later, we still don't know how this happened or who did it.
The detective working the case told me about a month ago that police were working on issuing subpoenas for the bank branch's surveillance cameras. When I visited the station Friday for another update, the detective was in court and absent.
“We need a more streamlined process so people know where to start and don't have to relive this nightmare over and over again,” Velasquez said.
It's a nightmare that more and more people are forced to face. According to a general population survey of 1,048 people conducted by the ITRC last year, almost 7 in 10 people said they had been a victim of identity theft in the past.
In a survey of 144 identity theft victims who contacted the nonprofit in 2022, nearly two-thirds said their problems were still unresolved months after the fraud was discovered.
The lasting impact of identity fraud
As with many things in life, the impact of identity fraud often depends on the resources available.
“Some people might look at a loss of $100 and say, 'That sucks, but it's not that big of a deal.' Others might say, 'That's going to ruin everything, and this is all I have left after I paid.' “My grocery bills are gone. I can't feed my family. I can't keep the lights on,” ITRC CEO Velazquez said.
we were lucky. We had a financial cushion to fall back on if we didn't get our money back right away.
Still, we faced challenges. We spent the next few weeks getting late fees and interest waived as some of our bills were declined. I also scrambled to make sure my maturing CDs were deposited into my new checking account instead of my old checking account.
However, the economic impact was mostly limited.
That's not necessarily the case for many people who have had their credit histories damaged, loans denied, and lost employment opportunities due to the lingering effects of fraud. After all, the type of fraud I experienced cost 15 million Americans $24 billion in losses in 2021, according to the latest data from Javelin.
And then there's the emotional side. For me, the thought of someone walking around pretending to be me makes me uneasy. Could it happen again? Probably.
Identity theft victims surveyed by the ITRC often reported feeling violated and having trust issues, with 16% considering suicide, a doubling since 2021..
“The emotional impact is growing,” Velasquez said. “People feel even more vulnerable and unable to recover.”
Janna Herron is a senior columnist at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @JannaHerron.
