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Putting the freeze on identity theft

December 17, 2008

It was a fortunate for Lisa Sieling that she was in the habit of checking her checks. The Eden Prairie resident discovered something amiss last April during her weekly review of her and her husband’s checking account. One check was clearly higher than what was typical. She started digging and found more unusual transactions. From there, she acted fast, putting out an alert on her various accounts and contacting police. She wonders though, if she hadn’t caught the theft when she did, “I mean who knows how large this thing could have gone.”

Sieling provides almost the textbook example of the dangers of identity theft – one being that people may not even realize they have become victim. Sieling caught the fraud within a week of when a suspect first started drawing on her account. It was eventually determined that a male suspect had stolen checks from Sieling’s mailbox and used her account information.

“He took all of the pertinent information – [and] made his own checks .” The suspect police eventually tracked down had even made up a fake business for the checks – which he used to buy gas and for large purchases at stores like Office Depot. Sieling had been in the habit of mailing her bills out from her own mailbox. “We’re done doing that,” she added.

Police were able to track down a male suspect, already in jail on other charges, she said. “He made a little sweep through our general neighborhood,” said Sieling. She noted that there were two other thefts in her neighborhood, “so he probably snagged three of us at the same time.” To deal with the financial tangle that has ensued, the couple has also hired a lawyer.

“As bad as it was, I mean, this could have been so much worse,” she added. She warned that people should be reconciling their checking account anyway, at the very least, once a month.“At the very least you should account for all those checks and if there’s one funny number in there that doesn’t seem make sense, you know it’s time to start digging.”

Tracking the theft

That police were able to track down a suspect in Sieling’s case is not necessarily common. According Pauline Sager, an investigative aide for the Eden Prairie Police, identity theft cases have slowly increased over the years in Eden Prairie. One difficult part of tracking identity theft is there may be EP residents who have fraud occurring in their name in other states, according to Sager. Such was the case with an Eden Prairie business, which found itself a victim of check fraud.

Resource:http://www.edenprairienews.com/