Montana ranks 28 in fraud complaints by state
Friday, March 14 2008 @ 12:23 PM MDT
Contributed by: Admin
Mineral County Sheriff provides tips to keep your identity safe
by Mark Hebert
In 2002, 54-year-old Sandra Worf received a call from a creditor that left her dumbfounded. The woman on the other end of the line asked Worf why she hadn’t repaid any of the $5,000 loan she had received, and then told her that if the loan wasn’t repaid quickly, her credit would be ruined.
The problem with the loan, as she would soon discover, was that it wasn’t in her name,
but rather in the name of an 81-year-old woman living in East Missoula. The creditor told
Worf, a Missoula resident, that a loan was taken out using her social security number but a different name – the woman in East Missoula — and asked her if she knew the elderly woman in East Missoula.
“She asked if she was my mother,” said Worf. “She wanted to know if this woman
lived with me, if I had given her my Social Security number to use, and I think she thought
we were trying to pull some kind of scam on her and her company.”
Turns out that Worf was one of hundreds of thousands to have her identity stolen in one
form or another in the United States that year, and a recent report from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) shows that the problem is only getting worse.
Between January and December of 2007, Consumer Sentinel, a complaint database
developed and maintained by the FTC, received over 800,000 consumer fraud and identity theft complaints. American consumers reported losses from fraud of more than $1.2 billion.
In 2006, Montana ranked 41st out of 50 states in the Consumer Sentinel statistics, but
shot up to 28th in 2008 with a total of 1,496 fraud complaints at a rate of 156.2 per every
100,000 people living in Montana.
“We are getting a lot of credit card fraud,” said Mineral County Sheriff Hugh Hopwood.
“This is where someone will open an account using another individual’s name. This information doesn’t surprise me because so many of these credit cards you can apply for over the Internet.”
Sheriff Hopwood said there are a number of ways people can safeguard themselves against fraud, and the first is to shred any credit card application they get in the mail.
“Make sure you don’t just rip them in half and throw them in the garbage,” he said. “Burn
them or shred them. When I say “shred,” I mean tear into little tiny pieces and make sure the document can’t be taped back together. You need to make sure that it is absolutely unusable to anyone else.” Besides the new data in the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel study, another report (identity theft victims by state, as compiled by the data clearinghouse) shows that Montana ranks near the bottom of the 50 states in ID theft – 44 out of 50 – but the highest percentage of ID theft in the state of Montana, 25 percent (99 out of the total 391 reported in 2007) were a result of credit card fraud.
“If you do apply for a credit card, and it doesn’t come in the mail within 10 days, you need to call the credit card company and tell them that you didn’t receive the card and at some point it is being intercepted,” Hopwood explained.
Hopwood said that one of the most effective ways to prevent identity theft is to put a security freeze on your credit files, and you can do so by picking up the Credit Freeze
document, provided by the Montana Department of Justice – Consumer Protection, at the sheriff’s office or by logging onto www.doj.mt.gov/consumer/consumer/forms/samplesecurityfreezerequest.doc.
A security freeze allows consumers to proactively “lock up” their credit information so
no one can access it without their permission, according to the MDJ website. This prevents a thief from falsely using someone else’s identity to take out a new mortgage, apply for a credit card or get financing.
The freeze is easily lifted if consumers plan to make a major purchase, open a new credit card or take out a loan. It costs $3 to place a security freeze on your credit files with a credit bureau, for a total of $9 to freeze your files with all three credit bureaus. For a security freeze to be effective for married couples, both spouses have to freeze their separate credit files. The total cost for a couple is $18.
There is no fee for identity theft victims who have filed a police report of identity theft to
freeze their files. To have a freeze temporarily lifted also costs $3 per credit bureau.
There is no fee to permanently remove a security freeze.
Though Montana ranked in the middle of the Fraud Complaints By Consumer (Colorado ranked first with 238.8 total complaints per capita and Washington State ranked second with 230.6, while Mississippi had the lowest rate at 90.6), Montanans paid out $1,298,969, or an average of $971 per complaint.
Of the nearly 1,500 fraud complaints in Montana in 2007, shop-at-home catalogs accounted for 14 percent, sweepstakes and lotteries accounted for eight percent, Internet services for seven percent, foreign money offers for six percent and Internet auctions for the remaining five percent.
In Mineral County, Hopwood said that the sheriff’s department sees a lot of sweepstakes and lottery complaints (i.e. bogus checks).
“You get the email that says ‘I’m from Uganda and my brother was running the country and he got kicked out, so now I have all this money and I need to get it into the United States,’” Hopwood mimicked. He said that the e-mailer will ask for a sum of money and promise to pay it back ten-fold. “It’s a hell of a scam,” he added.
In order to protect yourself thoroughly, Hopwood advised safeguarding any material that has your social security number, bank account information – old checkbook registers, voided checks — and if you don’t need them anymore, then get rid of them by burning or shredding them. “Guard that information with your life,” he said. “Because people can reinvent you if they have that information and trash your credit real fast.”
As for Worf, her credit wasn’t trashed and she didn’t have to pay back any of the $5,000 that the 81-year-old East Missoula resident received. It was determined by the Missoula Police Department that the elderly lady had simply made a mistake and wrote down the wrong social security number when applying for the loan — a fact that Worf said still seems fishy, but she was assured by MPD that “elderly people don’t commit crimes.”
Since then, Worf has changed her phone number to an unlisted one, routinely checks her credit score and destroys all documentation that has personal information on it when she is done with the documents. She added that things could have been much worse then they ended up and that she feels fortunate, but still vulnerable.
“The situation didn’t affect me financially,” she said, “but it really opened my eyes. There are people out there looking to scam you every time you turn around, and you really need to protect yourself.”
by Mark Hebert
In 2002, 54-year-old Sandra Worf received a call from a creditor that left her dumbfounded. The woman on the other end of the line asked Worf why she hadn’t repaid any of the $5,000 loan she had received, and then told her that if the loan wasn’t repaid quickly, her credit would be ruined.
The problem with the loan, as she would soon discover, was that it wasn’t in her name,
but rather in the name of an 81-year-old woman living in East Missoula. The creditor told
Worf, a Missoula resident, that a loan was taken out using her social security number but a different name – the woman in East Missoula — and asked her if she knew the elderly woman in East Missoula.
“She asked if she was my mother,” said Worf. “She wanted to know if this woman
lived with me, if I had given her my Social Security number to use, and I think she thought
we were trying to pull some kind of scam on her and her company.”
Turns out that Worf was one of hundreds of thousands to have her identity stolen in one
form or another in the United States that year, and a recent report from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) shows that the problem is only getting worse.
Between January and December of 2007, Consumer Sentinel, a complaint database
developed and maintained by the FTC, received over 800,000 consumer fraud and identity theft complaints. American consumers reported losses from fraud of more than $1.2 billion.
In 2006, Montana ranked 41st out of 50 states in the Consumer Sentinel statistics, but
shot up to 28th in 2008 with a total of 1,496 fraud complaints at a rate of 156.2 per every
100,000 people living in Montana.
“We are getting a lot of credit card fraud,” said Mineral County Sheriff Hugh Hopwood.
“This is where someone will open an account using another individual’s name. This information doesn’t surprise me because so many of these credit cards you can apply for over the Internet.”
Sheriff Hopwood said there are a number of ways people can safeguard themselves against fraud, and the first is to shred any credit card application they get in the mail.
“Make sure you don’t just rip them in half and throw them in the garbage,” he said. “Burn
them or shred them. When I say “shred,” I mean tear into little tiny pieces and make sure the document can’t be taped back together. You need to make sure that it is absolutely unusable to anyone else.” Besides the new data in the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel study, another report (identity theft victims by state, as compiled by the data clearinghouse) shows that Montana ranks near the bottom of the 50 states in ID theft – 44 out of 50 – but the highest percentage of ID theft in the state of Montana, 25 percent (99 out of the total 391 reported in 2007) were a result of credit card fraud.
“If you do apply for a credit card, and it doesn’t come in the mail within 10 days, you need to call the credit card company and tell them that you didn’t receive the card and at some point it is being intercepted,” Hopwood explained.
Hopwood said that one of the most effective ways to prevent identity theft is to put a security freeze on your credit files, and you can do so by picking up the Credit Freeze
document, provided by the Montana Department of Justice – Consumer Protection, at the sheriff’s office or by logging onto www.doj.mt.gov/consumer/consumer/forms/samplesecurityfreezerequest.doc.
A security freeze allows consumers to proactively “lock up” their credit information so
no one can access it without their permission, according to the MDJ website. This prevents a thief from falsely using someone else’s identity to take out a new mortgage, apply for a credit card or get financing.
The freeze is easily lifted if consumers plan to make a major purchase, open a new credit card or take out a loan. It costs $3 to place a security freeze on your credit files with a credit bureau, for a total of $9 to freeze your files with all three credit bureaus. For a security freeze to be effective for married couples, both spouses have to freeze their separate credit files. The total cost for a couple is $18.
There is no fee for identity theft victims who have filed a police report of identity theft to
freeze their files. To have a freeze temporarily lifted also costs $3 per credit bureau.
There is no fee to permanently remove a security freeze.
Though Montana ranked in the middle of the Fraud Complaints By Consumer (Colorado ranked first with 238.8 total complaints per capita and Washington State ranked second with 230.6, while Mississippi had the lowest rate at 90.6), Montanans paid out $1,298,969, or an average of $971 per complaint.
Of the nearly 1,500 fraud complaints in Montana in 2007, shop-at-home catalogs accounted for 14 percent, sweepstakes and lotteries accounted for eight percent, Internet services for seven percent, foreign money offers for six percent and Internet auctions for the remaining five percent.
In Mineral County, Hopwood said that the sheriff’s department sees a lot of sweepstakes and lottery complaints (i.e. bogus checks).
“You get the email that says ‘I’m from Uganda and my brother was running the country and he got kicked out, so now I have all this money and I need to get it into the United States,’” Hopwood mimicked. He said that the e-mailer will ask for a sum of money and promise to pay it back ten-fold. “It’s a hell of a scam,” he added.
In order to protect yourself thoroughly, Hopwood advised safeguarding any material that has your social security number, bank account information – old checkbook registers, voided checks — and if you don’t need them anymore, then get rid of them by burning or shredding them. “Guard that information with your life,” he said. “Because people can reinvent you if they have that information and trash your credit real fast.”
As for Worf, her credit wasn’t trashed and she didn’t have to pay back any of the $5,000 that the 81-year-old East Missoula resident received. It was determined by the Missoula Police Department that the elderly lady had simply made a mistake and wrote down the wrong social security number when applying for the loan — a fact that Worf said still seems fishy, but she was assured by MPD that “elderly people don’t commit crimes.”
Since then, Worf has changed her phone number to an unlisted one, routinely checks her credit score and destroys all documentation that has personal information on it when she is done with the documents. She added that things could have been much worse then they ended up and that she feels fortunate, but still vulnerable.
“The situation didn’t affect me financially,” she said, “but it really opened my eyes. There are people out there looking to scam you every time you turn around, and you really need to protect yourself.”
