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Avoiding ID Theft Takes Focus, Awareness

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By VALERIE KALFRIN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 13, 2008

TAMPA - Anxious to visit her mother undergoing surgery in South Carolina, Sophia Teague stuffed her paid bills into her mailbox and lifted the flag to signal the mail carrier.

She wound up alerting someone else – a thief who copied her checks, turned them into an account for a phony corporation and spent about $2,000 of her money, authorities said.

Financial crimes such as identity theft and check fraud increased last year 39 percent in Tampa and 24 percent in Hillsborough County, statistics show.

These quick and easy crimes can strike anyone, even law enforcement veterans, such as Teague, who is a Tampa police major.

But you don't need a high-tech security system to protect yourself, said Tampa police Sgt. Rebecca Bodamer of the economic crimes squad. A shredder and a sense of awareness will carry you far.

"People are just busy. But especially when it comes to their financial life, they need to be very focused," Bodamer said. "You can reduce your probability of becoming a victim, but you have to be proactive."

Police and the sheriff's office investigate a variety of economic crimes, including embezzlement, financial exploitation of the elderly, check fraud, forgery, credit-card fraud, identity theft and scheme to defraud.

As a whole, investigators say, these crimes have increased because they often have an uncomplicated setup but a big payoff.

The information available to criminals, especially online, "is mind-blowing if you know where to look," Bodamer said.

Thieves solicit victims a variety of ways, such as e-mail promising lottery winnings from other countries, eBay prizes or problems in bank accounts, police said.

Other scammers simply rifle through garbage or comb through business and residential mailboxes. This is how Teague was targeted, said Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office economic crimes Sgt. John Campo, whose unit investigated her case.

Campo said his squad handled 2,544 cases last year, a 24 percent increase from 2006.

The Tampa Police Department recently reassigned two more detectives to an original squad of seven investigating these cases after the squad received 3,376 cases last year, a 39 percent increase from 2006.

Bodamer said the increase is because of the popularity of these crimes and a change in how police classified some of these crimes. Identity theft – formerly recorded as bank fraud – wasn't separated as its own statistical category until late 2006 because of the high volume of these incidents.

The Federal Trade Commission said in a survey released in November that 8.3 million American adults, or 3.7 percent, were victims of identity theft in 2005, the most recent year available. Approximately 17,000 people in Florida reported being victims of this crime, that agency says.

Thieves can be tough to track, police said. With coffee shops and other businesses offering free Internet access, investigators can have a hard time pinpointing a Web user's home location.

Thieves also have become craftier. Years ago, if they snatched a person's bill payments from a mailbox, they cleaned the ink off the original check and rewrote it to a different payee and a different amount, Campo said.

Now they scan the original check to print their own through commercial software. They send the original on its way so there's no clues that a robbery was committed, Campo said.

Teague didn't discover the theft in May until she logged on to her bank account at home, after visiting her ailing mother for six days. Her checking account had been depleted, she recalled.

"They wiped me out," she said.

The sheriff's office found checks for $250 and more printed in the name of "Sophie Teague Enterprises" and cashed at businesses in southern Hillsborough County. Campo said investigators used store surveillance footage of the transactions to arrest Richard D. Corr, 34, of Riverview.

Corr now is serving 18 months in a state prison on felony counterfeiting a payment instrument, among other charges related to violating his probation, records show.

The sheriff's office is seeking Dawn Louise Sundquist, 34, of Riverview on a felony warrant charging her with uttering a forged instrument and misdemeanor petit theft.

Recovering from these kinds of crimes takes as much diligence as guarding your personal information, police say.

Teague was reimbursed by her credit union, but the theft still "caused me a lot of grief," she said. Checks she had written to cover her mother's expenses bounced because of the theft, so she had to ask a relative to cover the costs, she said.

She also informed the three major credit-reporting agencies of the theft. She now reviews her credit report faithfully and logs on to her bank account nightly.

"It was one of those things where, 'I can't believe it. I'm a victim,'" Teague said. "I was furious. I think I was just as mad at myself as I was the person who did it. Mailing stuff from the house just to save a little time."

Guarding Your Identity

Double check how you conduct your business to protect yourself from identity theft and check fraud, Tampa police and the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office say.

* Do not give out your Social Security number in online forms.

* Don't print your driver's license number on checks. Be sure no one is looking over your shoulder when writing checks in public.

* Do not leave outgoing mail in an unsecured mailbox. Go to the post office or try online banking.

* Do not write your Personal Identification Number (PIN) on your debit card, in your pocket or in your wallet.

* Do not open e-mail from senders you don't recognize. Especially, do not send money to people you don't know for winning contests you haven't entered.

* Do not respond to e-mail from eBay, banks, the FBI, the Federal Trade Commission or any other official entity. Scammers often pose as these entities. If you receive an inquiry that concerns you, visit the bank in person or call the agency to ask about it.

* Check your credit through Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. Each provides one free credit report per year.

* Review your bills, especially utilities, for charges you did not authorize and other accounts in your name.

For information, visit the Federal Trade Commission's Identity Theft Web site at www.ftc.gov and click on "Avoid ID Theft."

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