Complaints rise about kids as victims of identity theft

WASHINGTON Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. — The parents had no idea there was a bank account in their 12-year-old daughter’s name. They didn’t find out until after a con artist opened credit card accounts and then declared bankruptcy.

The Virginia case is an example of a troubling trend in identity theft: the targeting of children.

In a report released Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission said identity theft complaints involving youngsters under 18 have nearly doubled since 2003 — up from 6,512 to more than 11,600 last year.

While they make up a small percentage of the total ID theft complaints, the FTC’s Jay Miller says young people are attractive targets because they may not be as savvy as adults about safeguarding personal information and could easily fall prey while surfing the Internet.

“Identity thieves don’t see age as a hurdle,” said Miller, who works with law enforcement to combat identity theft. “All they want is as much information about a person as they can get, regardless of age. And believe me, they will find a way to use it.”

And they have, says Sue Houk with the San Diego-based Identity Theft Resource Center.

Houk’s friend was stunned to learn that someone had fraudulently opened a bank account in her 12-year-old daughter’s name. The culprit then opened about a half dozen credit card accounts, declared bankruptcy, had it written off and left the youngster with a mess of legal hassles.

“It’s an easy thing to do. Once they get a valid Social Security number, they just go to town,” said Houk, the center’s acting chief executive.

The most victimized age group for identity theft was the 18-to-29 category. The FTC said that category registered 29 percent of the complaints — more than 70,200.

This is the sixth straight year that identity theft has topped the agency’s annual report on consumer fraud complaints. The number of complaints filed with the FTC increased from 246,847 in 2004 to more than 255,500 last year.

The most common form of identity theft reported was credit card fraud, which accounted for 26 percent of the complaints, the study said. It was followed by phone or utilities fraud at 18 percent, bank fraud at 17 percent and employment fraud at 12 percent.

Overall, the commission received more than 685,000 fraud related complaints in 2005, up from 653,000 the previous year.

After identity theft, the second biggest category of complaints involved Internet auction fraud, followed by foreign money offers, shop-at-home or catalog sales and sweepstakes offers.

Other common consumer concerns included complaints about work-at-home offers, advance-fee loans and credit protection or repair solicitations.

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On the Net:

Federal Trade Commission: http://www.ftc.gov