By ROBERT PERKINS
LCF Outlook

Identity theft has become somewhat of a silent epidemic in La Cañada Flintridge and, indeed, the rest of the nation.

Detective Keith Gibbons and Deputy Brian Tibbett of the Crescenta Valley Sheriff’s Station handle the identity theft cases throughout the community.

Gibbons estimated that the CV Sheriff’s Station receives between eight and 10 complaints of identity theft every week, although the number fluctuates. During his 10 years as a detective, he has noticed an increase in the number of cases he has covered, although specific data were not available.

“They used to be few and far between, but now it’s like every other case we get is an identity theft,” Gibbons said.

Identity theft is the fastest growing non-violent crime in America, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Last year Los Angeles ranked fifth in the nation among cities reporting complaints of identity theft, with 17,312 complaints — that is nearly 135 complaints for every 100,000 city residents.

In La Cañada Flintridge, identity theft is usually drug-related, Gibbons said. He said that addicts from all over Los Angeles County prey on LCF residents to get quick money for drug purchases.

“La Cañada is a more affluent town,” Gibbons said. “They tend to victimize this one.” He added that other such affluent towns in the region suffered from identity theft problems as well.

Heather Ritcheson, an LCF resident, realized that she was the victim of identity theft at the end of March. She didn’t discover the crime until two years after the fact, which is unusual. Forty-three percent of victims discovered the crime within one month of its commission last year, and 66% discovered it within a year.

Ritcheson found out when she tried to write a check at a Ralphs that wasn’t in her neighborhood — the local Ralphs accepts her checks without question because the employees know her — and the check was declined.

When she called the check authorization company, she found that she had two outstanding checks totalling approximately $1,000 written from an address in northern California with a bank she didn’t use.

“I knew by then that it was identity theft,” Ritcheson said. But she still can’t figure out how it happened.

Not that it matters too much. The money that was lost was the bank’s, not Ritcheson’s, and it wasn’t worth its time to try to recover such a relatively small sum.

As for Ritcheson, the only real effect it had on her was to drop just one of her three credit ratings by a marginal 20%. A few phone calls and a police report later, and she’s moved on with her life.

And that’s why identity theft is so successful.

Although there are more damaging forms of identity theft, the most common involves creating fake checks that, in effect, only victimize a bank. It is almost impossible for the police to track down the perpetrator, and it’s usually not worth a bank’s time and effort to prosecute. It would seem like a victimless crime if it weren’t that small individual losses add up and force banks to increase their interest rates.

While the average street robbery nets about $100 for the perpetrator and can land him - if caught - in jail for more than 10 years, the average identity theft nets thousands of dollars and doesn’t involve the risk of much jail time. Typically, those convicted of identity theft are given community service or parole.

Over the past three years, both the Bush administration and the California state government have worked to close up loopholes in the laws to enact tougher penalties for identity thieves and the corporations who tacitly aid them, but the difficulty in tracing identity theft makes it finding criminals to prosecute in the first place a rare occurrence.

Avoiding Identity Theft

In most cases, identity theft is a preventable crime. Here are some tips to help prevent thieves from getting hold of your identity:

1. Keep your credit card out of sight until the cashier needs to swipe it. When you’re in line to purchase goods or services, don’t leave your credit card on the counter; identity thieves could take a picture of it with a cell phone camera.

2. When shopping on the Internet, never give out any information about yourself unless you’re on a secure website. Secure sites can be identified by use of “https:” in their address or a padlock symbol displayed in your web browser.

3. Do not respond to emails asking for your bank account or Social Security numbers. Legitimate businesses will never ask you to “verify” your account or personal information unless you initiate the communication.

4. Make sure to shred bills and other financial documents before discarding them. What you consider trash, thieves consider gold.

5. Use secure mail boxes. Criminals can steal your bill payments from your mailbox before the letter carrier picks them up.

Using common sense and these preventive strategies from National Crime Prevention Council, you can reduce your chances of becoming a victim of identity theft. The NCPC has been a key contributor in the prevention of identity theft since the release of an identity theft public education media campaign.

Source: Federal Trade Commission