You’d be surprised at who might steal your identity.

One popular topic these days in the news is that of identity theft, where someone obtains personal financial information about someone else and uses that information to illegally obtain cash or merchandise in that person’s name, usually without the victim’s knowledge. With the increase in online commerce, the problem is becoming greater every year. The Federal Trade Commission estimates that ten million people will be victims of identity theft this year.

An even greater surprise is that in about ten percent of the cases the thief is a relative. Often the victims are minor children and the thieves are their parents! How does this happen? Parents apply for credit in the names of their children, using the child’s Social Security number. They forge the signature, submit fraudulent employment and salary information and add themselves to the account as a cosigner. Once they receive the credit cards, they go out and run up debt, which often goes unpaid.

The unpaid debt shows up on the credit reports of the children involved, who often have no idea the problem even exists until years later when they try to obtain credit, find employment, or rent an apartment. Only then do they realize that their own relatives have jeopardized their credit ratings.

This creates additional problems for the victims, who often may be reluctant to prosecute or file police reports against their own family members. Filing a report is often a prerequisite for having fraudulent charges removed from your credit report, but many victims won’t do it if the thief is a relative. That being the case, there is little for the credit companies or authorities to do, and the victims often have to live with their bad credit for the seven years it takes to work its way off of their credit reports.

One alternative possibility is to hire an attorney as a mediator. He or she may be able to arrange to have the debts dropped from the victim’s credit report in exchange for having the thief accept full and legal responsibility. This is less successful than filing a police report, but it often works.

Victims in some states, such as California, may have the option of “freezing” their credit so that no one may obtain credit in their names without having their credit unlocked first. This is done using a personal identification number that only the individual knows.

Victims should get in the habit of monitoring their credit reports once or twice a year in order to make sure that no additional fraudulent activity is taking place. Once you have been victimized by a relative in an identity theft scam, you probably won’t feel secure again anytime soon.

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