Victim of credit fraud struggles to repair reputation, find home

By David Montero

July 14, 2000 Web posted at: 9:54 AM EDT (1354 GMT)

OXNARD, California (The Ventura County Star) -- For the past five years, credit reporting firm Experian thought Lisa Morris of Oxnard was a deadbeat with overdue bills and a delinquent conscience.

Turns out it was really a person pretending to be Lisa Morris.

The real Morris, a 27-year-old who works as a case manager for Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Ventura County, discovered in May that someone had stolen her identity and was using it to rack up $180,000 in debt.

"I cried when I found out," Morris said. "I just didn't understand why someone would do this."

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Morris joins thousands of people who have been victimized by identity fraud -- a crime that has grown at such an alarming rate that the Federal Trade Commission said Wednesday it has handled 20,000 phone calls in the past eight months.

The number of identity theft calls to the FTC has doubled since March, and the agency has averaged about 850 calls a week to its operators who counsel victims of the crime. The sharp spike in reports of identity fraud can be attributed to personal information being more widely available than ever, according to the FTC.

Betsy Broder, assistant director for planning and information at the FTC, said about a third of the calls are from people "feeling vulnerable" to identity theft. The remaining calls are from victims who have had everything from credit cards being opened in their names to people taking out loans using their identities. Identity fraud involving the Internet only accounts for five percent of the reports, Broder said.

The crime, Broder said, often reveals itself at the worst possible time for victims.

"Usually, they're applying for a home loan or an auto loan and then their credit report comes out and it's a mess," Broder said.

That's what happened to Morris.

When she married June 26, 1999, she and her husband were living with her mother and had planned to move out into a place of their own within a few months. But when her husband lost his job shortly after the wedding, they decided to wait to move into their own place.

In March, after he landed another job and she had been working steadily at her full-time job, they went apartment hunting. It wasn't until May 8 that they saw a place in Ventura that they liked enough to fill out an application.

"The landlord told me that I had too many people after me,"Morris said. "Then he showed me an 18-page credit report."

It was a stunning display of excess that dated back to 1995.

There were charges to Victoria's Secret, Nordstrom and nearly a dozen other department stores totaling about $5,000.

Add to that an unpaid student loan of $7,000 and a past-due $45,000 bank loan and that math became increasingly depressing. And none of the bills were hers.

"Because of this, we can't rent," Morris said. "And money is not an issue. We have money saved in the bank and I have even offered to pay one month ahead in cash to rent a place. But everywhere we try, they say no because of my credit report."

She said that since she reported the crime, filed a police report, wrote about 100 letters to various banks and creditors, missed about a week of work and battled frustration, about 50 percent of the damage had been reversed. But with half of it still on her report, getting a credit card or loan or renting an apartment is out of the question.

Detective Martin Polo, of the financial crimes division of the Oxnard Police Department, said identity fraud cases like Morris' are among the toughest to investigate.

"These victims are so helpless and the suspect is like a phantom," he said. "It is so hard to trace."

The FTC is hoping to help local law enforcement agencies by collecting a database with information about identity fraud crimes that they can access and use to string together related crimes. Broder said many identity fraud criminals prey on multiple victims and leave a trail of unpaid receipts across the nation.

Polo, who has been investigating identity fraud for the past year and is handling the Morris case, has seen the vast scope of the crime firsthand.

"I've had victims call from Los Angeles and say their Social Security number is being used in Oxnard, Florida and in another state," Polo said. "Borders don't stop the criminals."

National Fraud Center: Internet is driving identity theft
Fighting the plague of identity theft

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