Tag Archive for 'Identity Theft'

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Birth Date

Published on March 19, 2010 in Identity Fraud and Identity Theft. 0 Comments Tags: , .

What is your birth date?

This is question #2.

The name is only part of a person’s identifying information. The date of birth represents a universal identifier everywhere in the world, but it is often wrong or misleading. Did you know that some cultures often use the date of conception as a birth date? In America before the sixties “sexual revolution” dates of birth were often changed to conceal a premarital pregnancy.

Some people start using a latter date of birth to join the military and keep that date of birth throughout their lives. Some use an earlier or latter date of birth to appear more attractive in the job market. Others get younger every few years.

The Name

Published on March 17, 2010 in Identity Fraud and Identity Theft. 1 Comment Tags: , .

 A person’s identity is composed of many components. It originates with one’s parents at birth and develops unto death and beyond.

What is your Name?

This is question #1 and more difficult to answer  than you might think.

You will encounter problems with aliases, middle names, nick names, and generational designators. You will have to deal with maiden names, and name changes, legal or otherwise. You must also actively look for alternate names while conducting your research.

Different spelling variations of the name may all be pronounced the same. You may have to do some research to find the variations using the Penguin Dictionary of Names and other sources that specialize in names originating in different countries.

Evaluate likely search results by looking at how common the name is. In the USA the census data is used to generate a list of surnames in order of popularity. No such list could be found for Canada.

Names in  in Arabic, Urdu, and many other languages should be written in the native script by the subject. You may find that his name translates into something different than what he is telling you it is in English.

Identity

Published on March 15, 2010 in Identity Fraud and Identity Theft. 3 Comments Tags: , .

Ten questions to ask about a person’s identity:

  1. What is your name?
  2. What is your birth date?
  3. What was your name at birth and have you ever changed your name?
  4. Where were you born?
  5. What is your Social Security Number or Social Insurance Number?
  6. Where do you live?
  7. What are your phone numbers?
  8. What is your passport number?
  9. Where was it issued?
  10. What evidence do you have that this is all true?

In following articles I will look at each of these questions in more detail.

Immigration Fraud = Identity Fraud

Published on September 4, 2009 in Canada, Identity Fraud, Identity Theft, News, Private Investigator and Search Strategies. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

The first stage of any investigation is to determine the identity of the person you are investigating. Martin Collacott, a former Canadian diplomat and ambassador, recently pointed out, the existence of widespread fraud perpetuated against Canada’s immigration and refugee system makes it hard to know who you are dealing with if the person manages to get into Canada.

… Canadians should be aware, however, of the very high levels of misrepresentation, including identity fraud, that this and other Canadian visa offices have to contend with on a daily basis.

This problem is by no means confined to posts in Africa, nor is it a recent phenomenon. In the 1950s, for example, it was discovered that a large proportion of immigrants who had recently arrived from Hong Kong had done so fraudulently …

In 2002, the immigration office in Hong Kong reported that half of the 33,000 immigration cases awaiting processing involved misleading or fraudulent information.

In the case of applications from China, our largest source of immigration, access to information requests in recent years have revealed, for example, that 57 per cent of student visa applications from Fujian Province in China were submitted with fraudulent documents while a sampling of business immigration applications from that country found that only 35 per cent were bona fide.

In the case of our second largest source country, India, although the rejection rate for applications at our largest visa office, Delhi, is only 19 per cent, in Chandigarh in the Punjab, most had to be turned down — a large percentage because of the high incidence of fraudulent documents or other forms of misrepresentation …

At our office in Nairobi, which is the main overseas centre for the processing of applications by people from Somalia seeking settlement as refugees abroad, fraud, and particularly identity fraud, is a major problem …

Craigslist Dirty Talk Conviction

Published on May 26, 2009 in Dirty Tricks, Identity Theft and News. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

A Wisconsin woman has been convicted of disorderly conduct for posting her ex-boyfriend’s work telephone number and photos under the “casual encounters” section of Craigslist, encouraging men to “talk dirty to me.”

The 20-year-old has been ordered to write an apology and perform community service for the misdemeanor charge, and should consider herself lucky. She was originally charged with identity theft, a felony that would have entailed time in an unflattering orange jumpsuit.

Subjects with Multiple SSN’s

Published on July 9, 2008 in Identity Fraud, Identity Theft and Private Investigator. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , .

In Canada, it is rare to find somebody with two Social Insurance Numbers (SIN).  Where this happens it may be a case of clerical error or a reference to a former SIN appropriated by an identity thief. The former reason is extremely rare. In thirty years I have only encountered this once. The Canadian SIN is used as an identifier less than the SSN is in the USA.

However, in the USA the case is somewhat different. According to Susan Daniels, of Daniels and Associates Investigations, Inc. in Chardon Ohio, when searching through database aggregators such as IRB, it is common to find a subject referenced with two or three Social Security Numbers (SSN). Here are some of the reasons a person may show-up with multiple SSN’s:

  • a wife’s or child’s SSN could end up with father’s name
  • a parent’s SSN could show up with a child
  • the subject bought something with someone else and the SSNs could end up with each other’s name
  • the database producer is relating several SSN’s to one address
  • an error by whoever entered the data

Susan Daniels of Daniels and Associates Investigations, Inc. (9754 Thwing Road Chardon, OH 44024, Tel.:440.286.4072) has been a Private Investigator for 15 years.

Identity-theft Protection for Canadians

Published on July 1, 2008 in Canada, Identity Fraud and Identity Theft. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

You don’t have to spend $100 to $200 a year to defend yourself from identity theft at the level of protection that a paid service offers. You can do almost everything the services do, for free.

DIY Identity-theft Protection: A 12-step Program

Tombstoning Still Works

Published on June 18, 2008 in Identity Fraud and Identity Theft. 0 Comments Tags: , .

B. C. man uses stolen identity to amass $1M

Went By ‘Zino’; Police uncover his crimes when ‘man purse’ stolen
Rob Shaw, Canwest News Service Published: Thursday, June 12, 2008

VICTORIA – For the past 17 years, “Zino” has lived a seemingly ordinary life in Saskatchewan and B. C. By the age of 40, he had bought houses, opened bank accounts and collected credit cards. His real estate holdings across B. C., and more than 14 credit and bank cards, gave him assets and credit in excess of $1-million.

The only problem — “Zino” does not exist…

Mr. Nardi’s real name contained a long history of contacts with police. And so the identity of “Zino” gave him a clean slate from which to travel and accumulate assets unnoticed

Business Identity Theft

Published on March 11, 2008 in Company Research, Competitive Intelligence, Dirty Tricks, Fraud, Identity Fraud, Identity Theft, Methods and Private Investigator. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Infamous hacker Kevin Poulson paid the defaulted Yellow Page accounts of escort services to get their defunct telephone numbers reactivated. He collected the profits and when the police became interested, only the original advertiser was on record with the telephone company. I once saw this done in a home renovation scam.

In Cynthia Hetherington’s excellent book, [asa link]1889150495[/asa], she tells of a group of crooks who moved into an office recently vacated by an insurance company. They took-up the old phone number and began selling insurance.

When new policy holders complained about bad service to the insurance company’s head office, the scam was revealed, but the crooks had moved on.

It’s not just people who have their identity stolen.

Faked-Death & Impersonation-of-the-Dead Fraud

Published on February 6, 2008 in Canada, Forgery, Fraud, Identity Fraud, Identity Theft, Private Investigator, Sources, U.S.A. and United Kingdom. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

We have all heard of the faked-death scams to defraud insurance companies, escape prosecution, or to start over. The latter always happens in the aftermath of mass-casualty events like train wrecks, fires, and terrorist attacks. But what about the reverse — pretending to be somebody who has died?

This is not uncommon simply because it is so difficult to uncover the truth of someone’s identity and it has been so throughout my thirty years of Canadian experience.

In Canada, registering deaths is a provincial responsibility. The national vital statistics death registration system run by Statistics Canada does not include the deceased’s name or date of birth. There are no public search facilities for determining if the identity that you are presented with is that of a dead person.

In the U.S.A., the Social Security Administration Death Master file includes 98% of deaths of persons who participated in the Social Security program. This is may be searched at several internet sites.

In the UK, Smee & Ford Limited created a database called Mortascreen, which was used to screen direct mail lists for deceased people. This data was augmented and is now used as the foundation for Halo, a database that covers 85% of the deaths occurring annually in the UK. It is updated monthly and includes historical data to make it useful for verifying a person’s identity.

According to the UK’s Fraud Prevention Service, CIFAS, since 2001, impersonation of the dead is Britain’s fastest growing identity theft crime. The latest research suggests the problem has been under-stated by 3.5 times and revised statistics now indicate that 70,000 families experienced the pain of discovering their loved one had been impersonated after their death, to open accounts such as credit cards and loans.

According to the Home Office figures on crime in England and Wales in Jan 2003, “Between April 2000 and March 2001, the passport agency detected 1,484 fraudulent applications of which 301 used the identities of the deceased.”

I suspect that Canada may have a problem with this type of identity theft, but there is no way of knowing the extent of the the problem.

Profile of Identity Theives

Published on November 2, 2007 in Fraud, Identity Fraud and Identity Theft. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

A recent study by the Center for Identity Management and Information Protection suggests that less than one fifth of criminals get their data from the internet. In most cases it they get their data by re-routing mail, dumpster diving and intercepting mail.

The study is available at the Center for Identity management and Information Protection (CIMIP) but unfortunately they what identifying personal information before you access the study.

A summary of the study may be found on Yahoo! and at CIMIP.