102-Year-Old Woman’s Identity Stolen
How low can you go? In Virginia, a man has been accused of identity theft, forgery, and obtaining money by false pretenses.
The 25-year-old accused claims, “I know I’m not guilty of any of theses charges…The day that it aired people were calling me and texting me and asking me what have I done and I was like what are you talking about? I thought I was being pranked.”
He is, however, on probation for similar charges, but he swears that he’s no longer a criminal, though he was six years ago. Well, all right then, I guess he must be innocent!
According to detectives, in one scam he used counterfeit checks to make purchases at various stores, and then returned his purchases to different stores in exchange for cash.
One of his identity theft victims is a 102-year-old woman who recently graduated from the city’s citizen police academy, the oldest person ever to do so. “I don’t know how they got my identity,” she said.
How cool is she? But how difficult must it be to recover from identity theft at 102 years old?
Observing a few basic security precautions to protect your identity may help you avoid such a chore.
Consumers should also consider investing in an identity theft protection product that offer daily credit monitoring, proactive identity surveillance, lost wallet protection, and alerts when suspicious activity is detected on your accounts. McAfee Identity Protection includes all these features, as well as live access to fraud resolution agents in the event that your identity is ever compromised.
For additional tips, visit CounterIdentityTheft.com.
Robert Siciliano is a McAfee consultant and identity theft expert. See him discuss identity theft victims on The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet. (Disclosures)