Kentucky Insurance

ID Theft Rules for Financial Institutions:

“Financial institutions are prime targets of identity theft because they hold their customers money and store large quantities of personal data, so rules issued by Federal regulators on steps these companies must take to prevent ID theft could increase their potential liability. Under the final rules issued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and other Federal regulatory agencies, all financial institutions will be required to develop and implement a program to prevent identity theft on new and existing consumer accounts. ” from Insurance Information Institute

from Identity Theft Prevention:

The Wall Street Journal this week published an article on synthetic identity theft titled “The Borrower Who Never Was” (Christoper Conkey, October 29, 2007).

It describes how an identity thief named James Rose would create synthetic identities, those that appear real on paper, but were actually used by him in order to trick financial institutions into making loans or issuing credit cards.

“Working with a partner, Mr. Rose tricked the guardians of the credit system — lenders and the three big credit bureaus — into treating his fake identities as if they were real, creditworthy consumers. He obtained several hundred credit cards in the names of Mr. Gregory and as many as 500 other fake personas over two years, filching around $750,000 over a two-year period.”…. ID Theft

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