The Star Intech Features - Identity Theft Is Easier Than Ever
1 April 2008 (The Star)

I am sitting across a boardroom table from a man whom I will cal T.  I don't know anything about his real identity and he doesn't know much more about mine. As a condition of our conversation, we have agreed to keep it that way.

T, you see, is a former identity theft, a man capable of assuming your financial self and using it to his own ends. he is softly spoken, with a faintly breezy manner, for which he is quick to apologize.

"Sometimes when I talk I might come across as being a bit cocky and stuff," he says."And it might look like, oh, this guy doesn't care, kind of thing. But I'm not proud of what's happened in the past. Obviously, the fact that I'm here should illustrate that."

He served almost 20 months for conspiracy to defraud, and he has been out of jail for about two years. Some of the methods he used to steal people's identities have become obsolete in that time, but in many ways the game has become easier, not harder, in the intervening four years.

On the rise of social networking websites, for example, T says:"You used to have to work to get this information. Now it's just there." Originally I had believed that T was actually going to steal my identity for the purposes of this article. Apparently, it is not as simple as all that. It is simpler.

"You get someone's details," says T."Everyone says 'identity,' but that's all it is:Simple details."

These details - date of birth, address, mother's maiden name, account numbers - can come from a variety of sources: stolen credit cards or utility bills, discarded receipts. But for T the simplest route was always the best. He bought them."From callcentre staff,"he says.

If he needed any more information about you, T would ring you up and ask for it, on the pretext that a crime had already been committed: He would pretend he was calling from a credit card company's fraud department."People were like, 'Oh my God, what's happened?' and unfortunately I used that against them."

His line of inquiry is instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever dealt with a callcentre:"These two transactions on your Visa account, can you just confirm that you didn't make these transactions?But before we get to that point, can you answer some security questions?"

Everyone used to it, T says. People are more used to giving out their security details than ever before. Although it is undoubtedly on the increase, there is some question as to how big a problem identity fraud actually is, and whose problem it is. The banking industry is quick to blame the rise of identity fraud on the naivety of consumers.

A recent survey conducted on behalf of Capital One suggested that up to 55% of Britons are putting themselves "at risk" because they don't shred documents before binning them, but what is the real risk?

It is unlikely to happen to you," says Martin Gill, professor of criminology at the University of Leicester and director of a security consultancy called Perpetuity. The odds are very much in your favor. I don't think there are hordes of people gong through your rubbish bins trying to steal your identity. There are easier ways."

So how are victims chosen? Why you? Why me? Why not me? "It's usually what are you live in," says T, who concentrated on upmarket addresses."If you can afford to live there you'll usually have good credit."This chimes with statistics that show that residents of wealthy areas are almost five times more likely that the national average to become victims of identity fraud.

*Early start

*T began his criminal career as a student."These friends of mine had (illegally obtained) credit card numbers, and they used them to order goods over the Internet and get them delivered to different addresses. I was one of those addresses."
Over time he became more involved, until one day he realized that he was not maximizing the potential of all this stolen information.  "I thought, I've got someone's whose set of details here. What's to stop me applying for credit on their behalf?"

In this more sophisticated fraud, T would pretend to be someone and then pretend that person had recently moved house. He would then either request a replacement card on an existing account, or apply for a whole new card. After that, all he had to do was wait for it to arrive.

"I bribed local letting agents and students to let me use addresses," he says."All youneed is a set of keys. You're only there for the post really."

The most cunning part of the scam is that the victim remains wholly unaware of it; their own credit cards still work, and they have no idea that a fraudsters is using their identity to obtain cash and goods."Most people only realize they are a victim when they receive information through the post that they weren't expecting," says Gill."Details about a purchase they hadn't made."

"The second most common is when people are telephoned by a mobile phone company or a credit card company saying, 'We think there's fraud in your account,' I spoke to one person who had been a victim for 10 years and hadn't realized," Gill says.

T was nothing if not audacious. When he reached a card's credit limit, he would simply report it stolen."As a fraudster I pretended I'd been defrauded," he says."They used to refund the money, and I'd go out and use the card again."

Eventually he would ring up in the guise of the original person and insist he'd never applied for such a card. This had the effect of freezing the account and keeping debt collectors off his trail."In a sense it's like tidying up after yourself."

So unless his victims had reason to obtain a credit report, they would never know he'd borrowed their identities."Generally it doesn't affect most people, because you've sorted it out for them, but you've done it for your own reasons, because as long as they don't get wind of it, they're not gonna kick up a fuss."

*Whose problem?

*This raises an important point: Isn't identity fraud the banks' problem?Aren't they the ones who end up paying?

"True," says Gill."A couple of caveats, though - the bank covers it as long as they believe you aren't culpable in some way. My nephew was recently the victim of identity fraud and he was at first refused repayment because they said he'd been negligent with his details.

The second thing is, when we spoke to victims, they said there was a cost involved in terms of the time it took to sort it out. But being a victim of this sort of offense is mostly a hassle and a nuisance. That's how I'd describe it. It's not, by and large, a life-devastating event."

T's downfall - which seems to have been by no means inevitable - was brought about not by his brazenness but by luck."Someone else where I was living had some problem with the police and they raided my house. I was so far gone I thought I'd never get caught, so I had stuff on my laptop and details lying about."

He was, like his victims, careless with his personal information, and it cost him."They searched my room and seized my laptop on the off chance there was something on it. In the end the other person got off."

Despite the lure of easy money, T is now determined to stay on the straight and narrow. But what future awaits an ex-identity fraudster?"At the moment, I'm doing joinery." - Guardian Newspapers Ltd.