GILROY
– Identity theft is the fastest-growing type of crime in Santa
Clara County, according to Deputy Sheriff Detective Julian
Quinonez, who specializes in investigating it.
Quinonez has seen roughly 40 identity theft cases in the six
months since he transferred to the South County sheriff’s office in
San Martin.
GILROY – Identity theft is the fastest-growing type of crime in Santa Clara County, according to Deputy Sheriff Detective Julian Quinonez, who specializes in investigating it.
Quinonez has seen roughly 40 identity theft cases in the six months since he transferred to the South County sheriff’s office in San Martin.
With the busy holiday shopping season at hand, identity thieves may find it easier to get away with using credit cards in unsuspecting victims’ names.
Identity theft takes various forms, which change rapidly in popularity as police catch on to one or another. Right now, Quinonez said, the two hottest frauds around are taking out credit cards in others’ names and “check washing” – that is, using a special solution to wash the ink off a check and then rewriting it to the thief’s benefit.
Most identity thieves get their victims’ personal information from stolen mail or garbage, according to Quinonez.
From incoming mail, thieves can get checks, new credit cards or preapproved credit card applications.
By swiping outgoing mail, criminals can intercept forms bearing vital information or personal checks for paying bills, which can be washed and/or rewritten.
Dumpster divers can retrieve discarded bank statements, credit card receipts, paid bills or other papers with a person’s name, birthdate, Social Security number, credit or debit card number or employee number.
According to a sheriff’s brochure on identity theft, “This information enables the identity thief to commit many forms of fraud which include opening bank accounts, applying for credit cards, loans and social security benefits, establishing services with utility and phone companies. The thief can also obtain identification documents such as a driver’s license or passport.”
In one case Quinonez was working on last week, a victim was getting letters from an attorney saying she had been arrested in Morgan Hill for forgery. She hadn’t, the booking photo later proved; the woman in that photo had swiped her identity.
Solved ID theft cases
In a recently solved case, sheriff’s officers arrested a woman for stealing a San Martin woman’s utility payment and replacing “Pacific Gas & Electric” with her own name in the check’s “pay to the order of …” line.
The rise in identity theft is partly due to the fact that today’s criminals are increasingly computer-savvy. In another case, Quinonez was investigating a ring of people using a computer to print out counterfeit paychecks from local companies, complete with stolen company logos. The victim companies are basically paying wages to employees who they don’t know exist and who don’t do any work.
Many of these frauds are quick hits, striking random victims quickly and sinking back into obscurity like guerillas, looking for the next target.
That wasn’t the case with Martin Gomez, of Gilroy, who fought against a single alter ego for 10 years.
After being taxed, billed and otherwise held financially accountable for someone using his name, birthdate and Social Security number, Gomez and police finally tracked him down last summer in Alabama. Gomez never would have guessed it, but he knew the guy.
It was Juan Zavala, Gomez’s sister’s ex-boyfriend and the father of his nephew. Gomez hadn’t seen Zavala in 15 years, but he remembered visiting the home Zavala and his sister shared and spending the night on a few occasions. Zavala was an illegal immigrant but for the past decade had been living a new life under Gomez’s identity.
“It was just a drastic thing,” Gomez said. “I was kind of irate.”
For much of that decade, Gomez was living in Merced County, but police there only told him to file complaints in the states where the fraudulent activity was taking place: Washington, Alabama and California.
Gomez also tried to get Internal Revenue Service investigators to help him, to no avail.
“They just said, ‘We’ve got a case on it.’ That’s it,” Gomez said.
Every time Gomez reported the problem to the Social Security Administration, officials there offered to give him a new Social Security number. Gomez refused because he figured that would let the identity thief get off scot-free.
“Maybe I should have,” he said in hindsight Friday. “It would have saved me 10 years of heartache.”
Gomez contacted police in Oneonta, Ala. about six years ago after hearing his identity was being used there, but officers there got nowhere.
In the end, Gomez did most of the detective work himself. He got a list from the Social Security Administration of all the jobs he had ostensibly held, checked the ones that weren’t his and started phoning them.
“I said, ‘I am Martin Gomez.’ I quoted to them my Social Security number, my birthdate. ‘Am I employed there?’ ”
The first three or four places told Gomez he didn’t work there anymore. On the fourth or fifth try, however, a pipe company in Fort Payne, Ala. denied Gomez any information. He figured he had found his double.
He called the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department on July 24. Quinonez called the Fort Payne police, and a detective there arrested Zavala in August at the pipe company, verifying his true identity from his fingerprints. Zavala is still locked up.
Protect yourself
While Gomez’s case proves that not all identity thieves work through postal scavenging, protecting your mail is still the best way to prevent identity theft these days, Quinonez said.
“It’s kind of bad where we’re living in a world where the convenience of leaving your mail in your mailbox for the mailman isn’t safe anymore,” Quinonez said. “I wouldn’t leave my bills in my mailbox.”
But even a federal mailbox becomes unsafe when it’s full or if the mail gets stuck in the deposit door, sheriff’s detectives say. They’ve arrested thieves who confessed to reaching into mailboxes and either skimming from the top if it’s full or grabbing mail that stuck above the door.
Banks and stores can do more to join citizens in fighting identity theft, Quinonez said. Banks’ privacy policies can prevent them from giving police any information without a court subpoena, and many record over their security videotapes, making it hard for detectives to go back and see identity thieves at work there.
Despite long shopping lines this time of year, Quinonez said store cashiers should check ID for every credit or debit card submitted. He personally challenges cashiers who don’t ask for his and thinks other shoppers should do the same.
Still, though, there are plenty of places for someone with a false credit card to use it without being ID’d: gas pumps, self-checkout machines and the Internet.
“With convenience does come a price,” Quinonez said.
ID theft prevention tips
• Deposit outgoing mail at a post office or in a federal mailbox, not in your personal mailbox, especially when mailing a personal check or anything containing your Social Security number or bank account number.
• Never put outgoing mail in a mailbox that’s full. Make sure your mail drops down into the box. Many mail thieves reach in and retrieve mail on top.
• Get a P.O. box or locking mailbox to protect incoming mail. (If the latter, make sure your mail delivery person has access.)
• Shred any pre-approved credit card applications, credit card receipts, bills, financial papers and papers containing your Social Security number before you throw them away. Cut unwanted credit cards into several pieces. Make sure someone going through your garbage wastes their time.
• Never give personal information such as your Social Security number, date of birth, credit card number or bank codes away over the phone unless you initiated the call.
• If you have financial information on a computer connected to the Internet, make sure you have firewall software so hackers cannot access it.
• Don’t keep too much valuable information in your wallet or purse. Remove extra credit cards and IDs, and cancel the ones you don’t use. Memorize your SSN and bank passwords.
• Check your credit rating at least once a year with the three major credit bureaus. Report any fraudulent activity to police.
• If you ordered a new credit card and it doesn’t arrive in a timely manner, notify the issuer.
• Take note of anyone who look like they’re stealing mail, make sure you can describe them accurately and call police immediately.
Source: Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department. For more information, get an “Identity Theft” brochure at the South County sheriff’s office at 12431 Monterey Road, San Martin.
