13,000 Have Identities Stolen
In the latest example of identity thieves’ growing sophistication, intruders posing as Ford Motor Credit Co. employees broke into the computer database of the Southern California data firm Experian and stole confidential credit information about 13,000 wealthy people, officials said Thursday.
Only 400 of the victims were among Ford Credit’s 9 million customers, and those were by coincidence, said the company, Ford Motor Co.’s auto finance unit. Rather, they were picked because it’s easier to steal large sums from rich people with excellent credit, said Federal Trade Commission officials.
“Who was the guy who said he robbed banks because that’s where the money is?” said Betsy Broder, the FTC’s assistant director for planning and information. “If I’m going to steal credit, I’d rather steal from someone who’s affluent and for whom people will readily open an account with a high credit limit.”
Identity thieves can use data gleaned from credit reports to run up huge balances on existing credit card accounts or use personal information from the reports such as Social Security numbers to open credit card, bank or cell phone accounts in their victims’ names. In some cases, the personal information can even be used to drain money directly from a victim’s bank account.
Losses in identity theft cases generally are borne by the financial institutions, but the victims often must spend large amounts of time and money repairing their damaged credit ratings.
The details of how the theft was accomplished weren’t released, but it appears the thieves used Ford Motor Credit passwords to bypass several layers of security and gain access to Experian’s highly sensitive credit data. Broder and computer database experts said they’d never heard of anyone stealing so many key identities from credit report providers, which have extremely tight security systems.
Experian, a subsidiary of British retailing conglomerate GUS and one of the three largest U.S. credit reporting firms, said it had never experienced an intrusion on this scale. “It’s a huge number,” spokesman Donald Girard said from Experian’s headquarters in Orange.
The FBI, which is investigating the case, wouldn’t disclose how many of the 13,000 victims had experienced actual or attempted thefts. Girard said Experian had received 2,700 calls from potential victims as of Thursday.
The case caught Ford’s attention in late February. But it was this week before the last letter went out to potential victims providing toll-free numbers where they can check their credit reports with Experian and the other large credit reporting firms and repair any damage, said Richard Van Leeuwen, Ford Credit executive vice president.
Identity theft is by far the No. 1 fraud complaint at the FTC, victimizing hundreds of thousands of people a year. The ability to open financial accounts online has made it far easier for fraud artists, who no longer must undergo in-person scrutiny by a teller or salesperson or have their image captured by bank cameras, Broder noted.
“These days, you can engage in commerce without anyone seeing your face or knowing where you live,” she said. “Technology makes it much easier to engage in identity theft--No. 1, to obtain personal information, and No. 2 to exploit it.”
According to the Communications Fraud Control Assn., a trade group for telecommunications firms, more than $12 billion worldwide is lost annually to fraud artists using phone lines and computers. Estimates of U.S. losses to identity thieves run as high as $4billion. Victims on average spend 175 hours and $808 in out-of-pocket expenses to clear their names.
Ford Credit contacted Experian in February after receiving numerous calls about unauthorized credit checks, which appeared to have been made by Ford Credit’s Grand Rapids, Mich., office. On examination, it was clear the credit inquiries were fraudulent because the thieves used a different kind of software than Ford uses to access Experian’s files. The victims lived in nearly every state, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia--702 of them were in California.
Experian’s hotline number is (877) 828-1530, and Ford Credit’s number is (888) 838-8176.
