APRIL 2004

Identity Theft

An article by Keely Helgasome in a recent issue of Collector summarizes the major findings of the Federal Trade Commission’s latest study of fraud and identity theft: National and State Trends in Fraud & Identity Theft. The report lists the top ten scam reported by consumers in 2003. The FTC received more than half a million complaints in 2003, up 27 percent from the previous year. Included in those complaints were 214,905 complaints about identity theft. A third of the identity theft cases involved credit card fraud. These and other findings were presented at a conference arranged by the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year. A member of the audience raised an interesting issue. She pointed out that regulators find it difficult and perhaps not cost-effective to find and prosecute individuals guilty of identity theft because the amounts involved are usually quite small, but the total number of incidents, and aggregate damage, is quite large.