ID Theft Cyber Trading
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Stealing more than just money: Identity theft looms for years

By Thomas V. Bona
BusinessRockford.com
Posted Apr 07, 2008 @ 08:54 PM

ROCKFORD —

Laura Robinson didn’t buy a fish-shaped rug and a bathroom set from Fingerhut.

She didn’t take out an HSBC credit card or get an AT&T cell phone.

She never worked at a hospital.

And while she used to be named Laura Butler, she was never “Laura M. Buttler.”

But her credit report said she did all those things. Someone stole her Social Security number when she was 16 and opened a bunch of accounts in her name. Robinson didn’t find out about it until she was 21. Now, seven years later, the Belvidere resident is still dealing with the effects of identity theft.

“I tried to get a car; that’s when I started finding out there was stuff that wasn’t mine on my credit report. My dad actually had to sign for it and I was placed as a secondary buyer on the car,” Robinson said. “They actually had to put a fraud statement on my credit report ... I can’t go and apply for lines of credit automatically, they actually have to call and confirm with me.”

She’s one of the lucky ones, she said, because she didn’t have to pay back any of the $2,000 in charges the thief ran up. She’s also been able to build up her credit to a healthy score.

Now, as a certified credit and housing counselor for Family Credit Management in Rockford, Robinson works with clients who have had similar — and sometimes worse — identity theft cases. They range from older clients who gave their grandchildren their credit cards, only to watch them run up huge bills, to victims of online scams.

“I got an e-mail the other day from somebody saying I won like a million dollars in another country, and I’m like, ‘Oh, ha, funny,’ ” Robinson said. “But it amazed me: I had somebody the other day that lost $110,000 in one of those scams — their whole life savings, and they put all their equity from their house into it.”

Robinson never found out who ripped her off, and there was little the police could do even if she did confirm the name.

“They did have an address on my credit report and I wondered. I almost wanted to drive by to see a glimpse of the person to see if it was really them,” Robinson said. “That’s too bad that people take advantage of things like that.”

Staff writer Thomas V. Bona may be contacted at 815-987-1343 or tbona@rrstar.com.