Traffic light cameras can be annoying and when we are caught by them we just pay whether it is valid or not.  Now scammers/identity thiefs are taking advantage of this and not only making a lot of money but also stealing identities.  This is a very simple scam in which an identity thief will just pick a phone number from the phone book and whoever answers the phone is told that they have red light camera fine that is overdue and needs to be paid.

This person tells them that if they pay right now over the phone they can avoid a court case, a large late fee, or even time in jail.  If the person hesitates or says they are not going to pay over the phone they are threatened with an arrest warrant.  By this time the person who answered the phone is scared and is not thinking.  They do not realize that there was no photograph because there was no camera to result in an overdue bill.  This scammer who called you has not ability to fine you, arrest you or take you to court.

One of the reasons that you are scared is that the person on the phone has identified themselves as an officer of the law and maybe even gave you a fake identification number.  The scammer or identity thief is hoping that you are going to be too lazy to do any fact checking and is working on you being surprised.  Being so scared that you might have to go to jail if you do not pay this overdue fine you ignore a few signs that would normally tell you that the phone call and the person making the call is anything but legitimate.

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Identity thieves can get your personal and financial information in a variety of ways, some simple and some very sophisticated.  This is why you need to be on your toes when it comes to protecting your information at all times.  There is one bizarre way that identity thieves will use to obtain personal and financial information that not too many people would thing they would use.  That bizarre way is to steal personal information from the dead.

Yes, the dead.  This does not mean that they go to the cemetery and take names off the headstones and apply for a driver’s license and Social Security card in a deceased person’s name that has been dead for many years.  No, they do it with a more modern twist.  The identity thieves scour the newspapers to see who has died and makes a list of them and their address.  They then go over to the home and grab any mail that is still in the mail box that no one has gotten around to getting or else they go through the garbage.  They are looking for any type of credit card receipts, utility bills, credit card statements, etc.  This may take several days or even up to a month to get these types of things.

Many times the relatives of the one who just died is still traumatized by the death and do not think about stopping the mail, picking it up, or even contacting the credit card companies and asking them to stop sending out the statement or closing the accounts because of death.

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Thirty-three year old Kristina Louise Smith of Oregon is now in jail again. She has been arrested for allegedly stealing checks from different women’s purses in the Rogue Valley Mall changing rooms. She then cashes them at various places around the county after making the check out to herself and cashing at the local bank. Sometimes she will use the name of a friend.

During the last three years she has been arrested for various felony crimes that include identity theft, theft, and forgery. Often times she uses Pinner instead of Smith as her last name. Pinner is the last name that she used in her latest scam that involved taking the checks from different purses that had been left in the changing rooms and stealing mail from a neighbor.

In the changing room incident, Kristina would wait in a changing room while women tried clothes on in other changing rooms. When they left to look at different clothes she would sneak into their changing room and take a check from their purse. Usually she would take the check from the back so the person would not realize immediately that a check had been stolen. Another time she stole a neighbor’s checkbook in Eagle point. Kristina cashed the checks around town with one being made out for one thousand eight hundred dollars.

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On April 12, 2012, lawmakers in Maryland have given their approval for a one-a-kind measure that will give parents steps that they can take to protect their children from becoming victims of identity theft. Yes, children under eighteen are having their credit ratings damaged before they are even old enough to apply for credit. According to the “ID Analytics Consumer Notification Serve” study that they released in 2011, there have been approximately one hundred forty thousand identity frauds committed against minors every year.

Researchers from “Carnegie Mellon University” and a company who provides protection against identity theft worked together and during their research they found that out of the forty two thousand records of children that they went through, more than ten percent had some signs of some type of fraud or identity theft. With children, they do not usually know that they are victims until they are over the age of eighteen and apply for credit only to be turned down because of a bad credit report.

Under the current law in Maryland, all credit agencies now have to put on a security freeze for everyone’s credit, regardless of age, who asks for it. Unfortunately, they can also refuse to put a lock on the credit of anyone who does not already have a credit report which can spell trouble for children. The only way a minor would have any type of credit report is if they were an identity theft and/or fraud victim.

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Every year investigations by the Better Business Bureau uncover many scams.  The scams range from schemes that have been around for many years new gimmicks.   Many of the older scams are just recycled with different words or current issues are used to make them some newer. The top scam of the year, according to the Better Business Bureau, was a Phishing email claiming it was from them.  It was about a complaint, which could download malicious software.  This malicious software could mine financial accounts.

Here is an in depth look at the top scams of 2011 according to the Better Business Bureau.

• Job scams—every year the BBB sees many working from home and secret shopper scams but they cannot only kill your hopes of making money but also steal your personal information.  The websites, online applications, and scam emails look professional but how they get your personal information is to as you to fill out a report to check your credit or else a form to direct deposit your money to provide some bank information.  These forms are just a way for the identity thief to capture your sensitive personal information that can be used like your bank account number, Social Security numbers, etc.
• Lottery and sweepstakes scams–the top scam was the email that stated it was from the founder of Facebook telling you that you had won one million dollars from Facebook. Read the rest of this entry »