Identity theft high in Valley



Identity theft

Posted: Monday, June 24, 2013 5:00 am

By FERNANDO DEL VALLE Valley Morning Star

HARLINGEN — When a Houston Nissan dealership called a San Benito man recently to tell him he was late on his car payment, he said he didn’t buy a car there, a detective said.

Then the 63-year-old man remembered that thieves stole his personal identification records about 20 years ago in Houston, San Benito Police Detective Rogelio Banda said.

On May 23, the man filed a report telling police he had become the victim of identity theft, Banda said.

“It can haunt you for many years,” Banda said.

The growing number of cases of identity theft here led the Federal Trade Commission to rank the Harlingen and Brownsville region 86th for such cases among metropolitan areas in 2012, said Lisa Schifferle, an attorney with the agency’s Privacy and Identification Protection division in Washington, D.C.
Last year, area residents reported 402 cases of identity theft to the agency, she said.

The McAllen-Edinburg-Mission area ranked 75th, with 799 complaints filed, the agency said.

In Harlingen, residents reported 131 cases of identity theft from Jan. 1 through June 20, said Sgt. David Osborne, a spokesman with the Harlingen Police Department.

“We’ve seen a rise in reports,” said Osborne, who said residents reported 113 cases in 2012.

Osborne attributed some of the rise to an increase in reporting. Now residents can go online to report identity theft and other crimes on the city’s website, www.myharlingen.us.

Illegal immigration helps drive the incidence of identity theft in Harlingen and other areas that have become crossroads for undocumented immigrants, Osborne said.

Human smugglers sell stolen identification records to undocumented immigrants who use the information to help get jobs further north, Osborne said.

“This is a very prevalent crime through most the border states,” Osborne said.

A 34-year-old San Benito man told police June 10 that someone has used his Social Security number to get jobs years after he lost his wallet, Banda said.
“Someone’s using his ID to work,” Banda said.

The technological revolution that’s led to online banking and purchases has made identity theft a burgeoning worldwide crime, officials said.

“Online scams are international,” Osborne said.

Many residents find out they’ve become victims at tax time, when the Internal Revenue Service sends them statements from other parts of the country, Osborne said.

Organized crime has become involved in the scams, Schifferle said.

“The big trend is the huge amount of tax-related identity theft,” she said.

Every year, identity theft affects 9 million Americans, or 3 percent of the population, Schifferle said.

“ID theft has been the No. 1 complaint we receive since the past decade,” she said.

Complaints led the FTC to rank Texas as seventh among the states with the highest incidence of identity theft. Last year, Texas residents reported 28,299 complaints to the agency.

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