Perpetrators Of Identity Theft Essay

6. Modus operandi

Perpetrators of identity theft make use of various methods when obtaining the personal identifying information of others and these methods can evolve over a period of time (Hoffman & McGinley, 2010:16). The most common method includes unsystematically searching through a victim’s garbage in order to obtain personal documents such as credit card bills, phone bills, utility bills, bank statements and other documents with personal information such as a name, address or account number (Perl, 2003:173). According to Copes and Vieraitis (2009:332) perpetrators of identity theft may call an individual, pretending to be a bank employee who wants to verify certain private information or even bribe an actual bank employee to provide the private information of an individual. Other perpetrators will simply lurk behind individuals whom are at a supermarket checkout line or at an automatic teller machine in order to learn an individual’s social

Identity theft is divided into three motivational categories namely; financial identity theft, non-financial identity theft and criminal record identity theft (Perl, 2003:176-177). According to Perl (2003:176) financial identity theft takes place when a perpetrator takes a victims’ personal information such as the name of a victim for monetary gain by opening a bank account, withdrawing money from the victim’s bank account, opening a credit card or filing for bankruptcy. During financial identity theft, the victim suffers financial loss or even damaged credit history. The perpetrator creates a damaged credit history in the victim’s name through excessively spending money on the victims’ name, leaving the victims with absurd bills or credit (Perl, 2003:176). The victim of the crime is left with the daunting task of attempting to repair the damaged credit