About financial abuse: INDENTITY THEFT
Skilled identity thieves use a variety of methods, both low- and hi-tech, to gain access to financial data. Often they particularly target the elderly. Ways of stealing identity include:
- Theft of wallets and purses containing identification, and credit and bank cards
- Theft of mail, including bank and credit card statements, preapproved credit offers, telephone calling cards and tax information
- Complete a change-of-address form to divert the victim’s mail to another location
- Going through trash for personal data; dumpster diving
- Fraudulently obtain a credit report by posing as a landlord, employer or someone else who may have a legitimate need for, and a legal right to, the information
- Obtain the victim’s business or personnel records at work
- Find personal information in the victim’s home
- Find personal information shared on the Internet
- Buy personal information from "inside" sources (e.g., an identity thief may pay a store employee for information that appears on an application for goods, services or credit)
- Call the victim’s credit card issuer, pretend to be that individual, change the mailing address on the account, then run up charges on the account; because the bills go to the new address, the victim may not immediately realize there's a problem
- Establish phone or cellular phone service in the victim’s name
- Open a bank account in the victim’s name and write bad checks on that account
- File for bankruptcy under the victim’s name to avoid paying debts incurred under that name, or to avoid eviction
- Use counterfeit checks or debit cards, and drain the victim’s bank account
- Buy cars by taking out auto loans in the victim’s name