ID Theft: Crime of the New Generation
It is almost everyday when identity thieves take advantage of innocent individuals’ personal information. Such crime happens when these criminals infiltrate essential information about one’s identity for fraudulent reasons, regardless of whether the victim is dead or alive. Such vindictive act may result to embezzlement that could grossly affect the victim’s financial circumstances as well as charges for financial services.
No two individuals are identical, and this is even true with twins. One characteristic in a person is its name. Other distinctive information also include the person’s date of birth, place of birth, full maiden name of the mother, and documents or papers for identification like social security number or insurance plan.
All these are very important to a person because these reflect his identity that is unique to every man, thus it must be protected. However, in our present society, for some economic reasons or there are people who simply have criminals minds, crimes are intentionally and wantonly committed. Take the case of a minor traffic violation such as over-speeding by an identity thief and is issued a traffic citation. He claims to have left his license and has no other documents to identify him, thus using the victims drivers license number and the violation is in the victims name, to his prejudice.
Consequently, the innocent victim is compelled to pay fines and corresponding charges. It could have been a relief if the victim is already dead, but if he is not then worst things could happen to him. The failure to pay fines and charges is on him and over due is forthcoming. A bench warrant may perhaps be issued to the poor fellow. In summary, identity theft transpires when thieves utilize your personal information for fraudulent or criminal reasons. This crime is otherwise known as “impersonation fraud”, as in this case.
So as we are fully aware, there are actually several types of id theft, contrary to popular belief that only financial fraud is a source of this thieving. It is crucially important to spot the signs or spot the allusions leading to the commission of this so-called crime. It could create a tremendous incident that can happen to anyone if he falls prey to this fast growing scam industry, which is also considered as the “Crime of the New Millenium: ID theft”.
The thief obtains from the prey some sensitive personal information such as the victims full name, date of birth, civil status, present address, social security number and other valuable information. With all these information, this scammer may obtain credit cards or loans all under the victims name. This is a classical and most common example of an id theft.
