Death and taxes go together – we know that.
But what about death and credit cards? Evidence is mounting that identity thieves are using personal information from the recently deceased to open new credit cards under the dead person’s name. It’s ghoulish, all right, but it’s also stoppable. Here’s how.
First the bad news. Identity fraud is the one market in this economic quagmire that is thriving. According to the 2009 Identity Fraud Survey Report, from Javelin Strategy & Research, the number of Americans who have been victimized by identity fraud has grown 22%, to 9.9 million adults. That amounts to $48 billion in 2009 alone, Javelin reports.
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Another study, this one from Gartner, says that credit card fraud is the number one type of I.D. fraud in the U.S. – with Americans losing, on average, $929 per card theft. Worse, there’s only a 5% chance that the fraud artist will be caught, convicted and sent to jail, Gartner reports.
But by stealing credit card data from deceased people, scam artists have really hit a new low. Identity thieves accomplish this by uncovering the deceased cardholder’s Social Security number – which is easier to obtain than you might think – and using the number to pry his or her way into the deceased’s credit card account.
Part of the blame lies with victim’s families. Investigators say that, in way too many cases, families of the deceased wait too long to notify the appropriate authorities - like banks, the Internal Revenue Service, banks, credit card lenders and estate planning lawyers and financial advisors – that a family member passed away.
But the U.S. government doesn’t escape any blame. Seasoned identity theft criminals know how to access the Social Security Death Index – a thorough, easily-accessible database of deceased Americans that, amazingly enough, includes that person’s Social Security number, among other relevant personal financial data. All a scam artist has to do is scour the obituaries, pick a target, and access his or her Social Security records (which can also be ordered from the SSA if you have the deceased person’s name and birth date). It’s a short step from there to a new credit card in the deceased person’s name – and a big headache for that person’s family.
