What Are The Penalties For Identity Theft

President Bush signed a law in 2004 that required tougher punishment for convicted identity thieves. It was called The Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act. This law will do the following:

• It will increase the existing penalties for the crime of identity theft.
• It will establish aggravated theft as a criminal offense.
• It will establish mandatory penalties for aggravated identity theft.

When they mention “aggravated identity theft” it is defined in the law as the use of a stolen identity to commit certain criminal acts.

Under the new law, if the criminal is convicted of identity theft:

• They will receive a mandatory five-year prison term if convicted of providing fake ID’s or using fake ID’s to help terrorists.
• They will receive a two year prison term of providing fake ID’s or using fake ID’s for non-terrorist acts.

Identity theft is the fastest growing crime over the past five years and the average victim does not discover the identity theft for one to six months after the first occurrence. According to records from 2002, the average fraudulent charges per victim were $18.000 and one year later it was approximately $92,893, making it an increase of 416% in one year. That is one tremendous leap and only goes to support the claim that identity theft is on the rise.

There are many methods that identity thieves can steal your identity from the simple pick pocket to the intricate phishing. Here are just a few of the many ways:

• They an steal records from their employer.
• They can bribe an employee who access to these records or hacking into the company’s computer.
• They can obtain credit reports by abusing their employer’s authorized access to credit reports.
• They can pose as a landlord or someone who may have a legal right to that information.
• They might steal your debit or credit card numbers as your card is processed.
• They can complete a “change of address form” to divert your mail to another location.
• They can steal information from your home, and it does have to happen because of a home invasion. It could even be a nosy neighbor or family member.

As you can see, an identity thief can steal your personal information in many different ways. Just be careful and safe guard all of your personal and financial information.

• Identity Protection Reviews

  • LifeLock™
  • Identity Guard™
  • TrustedID
  • Protect My ID

• Identity Theft FAQ’s

  • What Are The Penalties For Identity Theft
  • What is Spoofing?
  • What is Data Breach
  • What is Spear Phishing
  • What is An Identity Theft Report
  • What Are Red Flag Rules
  • What is iJacking
  • How to Protect Yourself Online
  • What is Credit Card Skimming
  • Can Bad things Happen to Your Name
  • How Safe is FaceBook
  • Is My Identity Safe at Hotels

• Recent Blog Posts

  The Benefits of Credit Monitoring

  The basics of a credit monitoring service is that they will monitor your personal information and if there is a change in your credit report they will let you know, even if it a change you made yourself.  The service has no way of knowing who made the changes but just know that a change [...]

  Little Known Identity Theft Methods

  There are many ways to have your identity stolen such as having your credit card skimmed, your credit card stolen, mail stolen with some personal information on it and many other methods.  In addition to the methods that many people think about as ways to steal your personal information, there are other ways that people [...]

  Lending Scams and how to Protect Yourself

  If anyone says that they will never fall for identity theft scam they are wrong because no one is immune from becoming a target of a scam because the scammers continually come up with new and innovative ways to scam their victims.  Most of the victims of a scammer are usually the elderly, you are [...]

  What to Tell Your Teenager About Identity Theft

  Identity thieves have no age limit on whose identity they steal so when your children are old enough to understand what identity theft is then you should talk to the m about it and how to protect themselves from becoming a victim.  A good age is when they are a teenager and first want to [...]

  Identity Theft and Dealing With the Bank

  When you have your identity stolen the identity thief can get access to your bank account in different ways.  The most common way is to steal your debit card.  In addition, whenever you pay for anything with a check you are basically handing over your routing information and account number. Identity theft offenders have found [...]