ID theft victims face lifetime of vigilance

By Rachel Konrad

updated 8:11 p.m. ET Feb. 24, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO - Warren Lambert thought it was just another piece of junk mail until he read the letter more closely and learned that con artists may have obtained his Social Security number, name and address — just what they need to steal his identity and ruin his credit.

Lambert is one of nearly 145,000 Americans rendered vulnerable by a breach of the computer databases of ChoicePoint Inc., a leading trafficker in a growing pool of information about who we are, what we own, what we owe and even where we go.

The Georgia-based company began mailing the warning letters after acknowledging this month that thieves opened more than 50 ChoicePoint accounts by posing as legitimate businesses.

Lambert, a retired banker in San Francisco, now spends several hours a day phoning customer service agents, poring over credit card statements, ordering credit reports and checking bank accounts.

He worries that thieves will eventually do to him what sheriffs detectives in Los Angeles say they’ve done to more than 700 other people — reroute his mail, ring up credit card debts, buy a car or even commit a felony in his name.

“Now I have to be on a credit monitoring service and look over my shoulder for the rest of my life,” said Lambert, 67. “I feel sorry for the younger victims who are eventually going to buy a house or a car. They’ll try to buy and then they’ll discover that their credit is ruined.”

More than 9.9 million Americans were victims of identity theft last year, crimes that cost the nation roughly $5 billion not including lost productivity, according to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. The Federal Trade Commission ranks identity theft as the No. 1 fraud-related complaint.

Many victims are dumbfounded by the dearth of federal and state laws aimed at protecting their credit histories and other information about them that data brokers gather and sell to institutions including news organizations, banks and, increasingly, companies vetting prospective employees. Victims are also frustrated by the amount of time it takes to re-establish identities.

According to a 2003 survey by the San Diego-based nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center, the average victim spends at least 600 hours over several years recovering from identity theft.

And based on wages of people surveyed, it cost the average victim nearly $16,000 in lost or potential income — not including what they might have paid for bogus purchases creditors wouldn’t reimburse.

Even worse than the drain on time and income, victims say, is a sense of helplessness and doom they feel — the notion that thieves could strike again at any time.

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