Identity Crisis

Michael Berry prowled the streets of South Central Los Angeles in a rented silver Volvo, searching for a clue. He turned onto a residential street called 12th Avenue, peered at each home and then slowed the car almost to a stop. His heart fluttered.

Off to his left was the address that had obsessed him for months. He saw a well-tended bungalow with crisp green grass. Watering the lawn was a man covered in tattoos and wearing a sleeveless undershirt and aviator sunglasses, who watched closely as Berry drove by. "Oh crap, I didn't do this right," Berry muttered to himself, gripping the steering wheel a little tighter and trying not to stare back.

Related article also from today's Washington Post:

washingtonpost.com

Identity Thieves Preying On Seniors

By Michelle Singletary

Sunday, August 10, 2003; Page F01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37282-2003Aug9.html

With IT going offshore so is easy access to our databases full of our financial records. Identity theft can only increase and the costs associated will also increase. Of course these costs are just passed on down to the consumers.
If we can't stop identity theft within our shores, how do we expect to stop it as our records leave our shores?
Who in India or the PRC is going to catch and jail such criminals?

"The financial costs are staggering, though no one can put a precise dollar figure on them. Star Systems estimates the losses at $24 billion, the vast majority in the past decade, a burden shouldered largely by the nation's financial institutions as a cost of doing business.

They are well aware that identity thieves are growing not only more numerous, but more menacing. Scam artists and grifters have been joined by criminal groups from abroad and street gangs that once specialized in robberies or extortion. And as September 11 made plain, identity theft also has become a favored technique of terrorists. Often using documents generated by desktop computers, they take on fake names, Social Security numbers, birth certificates and driver's licenses in schemes to cloak themselves and raise money for their operations. It is, law enforcement authorities agree, frighteningly easy for them to get away with it."

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