Identity Theft

Crime
Prevalence, clearance rates
and victim/ offender
characteristics..

By: Maryam Abu Safeia

Submitted to: Dr. Mohammed Hillal
 Definition
The unlawful use of another’s personal
identifying information

Include :
• Individual’s name
• Address
• Social security number
• Date of birth
• Alien registration number
• Taxpayer identification number.
• Government passport number.
• Driver’s license information.
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• Mother’s maiden name
 Definition

Biometric information as:

o Finger point

o Voice print

o Retina image

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The identity theft is one of the
greatest threats to the U.S. Losses
economy .

According to the US General

Accounting Office, the actual losses
Total loss from this crime would
continue to grow, with losses associated with identity theft totaled
expected to be in excess of 2.3$
billion in the near future 442$ million 540$ million 745$ million
fiscal year 1995 In 1996 In 1997

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Two methods the offender can obtain personal information
of the victim

Employed low technology Employed high technology

• Theft of wallets (require some skill and expertise)

• Use of the internet

• Purser
• Skimming –‫برامج الحاسوب لتخزين بيانات‬ ‫هي استخدام‬
• Dumpster diving (obtain by going ‫بطاقات االئتمان وطباعتها على بطاقة اخرى لتصبح نفس بطاقة‬
through an individual’s garbage ) ‫ الضحكية وبذلك يمكنه من سحب النقود واخذ القروض ووالخ‬.

• Pretext calling - ‫باالتصال الوهمي‬ ‫المحتال‬ ‫فيه يقوم‬

‫بالضحية واخذ معلوماتمنه علىانه مؤسسة او اي شخص اخر‬

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Purpose of study

The purpose of this study was to examine the magnitude

of danger and characteristics of identity theft.

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 People who were defrauded

Extent of identity theft in US

The federal trade commission (FTC)

• Is the main agency that mandated by US Congress to collects information about identity theft, and
keep an accurate log of all complaints made by citizens regarding the illegal use of identities.

• The only agency that have online data base that contained all information about people who were
frauded

Office of the Inspector General (OIG)

• The second source of data on identity theft

• The study collected data using random sample 400 of all allegations made, and it was found that identity
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theft represented (81.5%)
 Methodology and Data

Methodology Data collection

• A case study methodology was selected • The data used were derived from a large municipal police
department’s centralized database in federal state, and make
for this project.
comparisons between identity theft and other theft related
offenses as [credit card fraud, check fraud, robbery, and motor
vehicle theft].

Database of police included:

• The number of calls for service and arrests for each of the different offense type of interest.

• The characteristics of both victims and offender who were involved in identity theft cases
that resulted in an arrest . 8
 Theft related offenses
Variables ♦ Identity theft

♦ credit card fraud

Demographic characteristics for ♦ check fraud

victim and offender as :
♦ Robbery
♦ Gender
♦ motor vehicle theft.
♦ Race

♦ Age

♦ Offender Employment status

♦ Number of offenders
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♦ Victim-offender relationship
Research questions

• Was the increase in identity theft similar to those of the other theft
related offenses?

• Was the clearance rate for identity theft similar to those of the other theft
related offenses?

• What were the predomination demographics characteristics associated

with victims and offenders of identity theft

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 Incident count of offense
The first research question:
Was the increase in identity theft similar to those of the other theft related offenses?

• Over the same time period of study, incidents of identity

theft increased by 105%.
• Reports of credit card fraud increased by 43%.

• Motor vehicle theft increased by 13%

• Robbery remained stable.

• Check fraud decreased by 32%

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 Incident count of offense
The second research question:
Was the clearance rate for identity theft similar to those of the other theft related offenses?

• The clearance rate for identity theft continually decreased

from 16 per 100 in 2002 to 13 per 100 in 2002

• Identity theft had the third lowest clearance rate in 2000

and 2001..

• The clearance rate for robbery were fairly stable with a

slight increase
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 Clearance rate

• Test of statistical significance tests were performed on the clearance rate data, changes
in the proportional clearance rate for identity theft was similar to proportional changes in
all fraud crime, credit card fraud, check fraud, and motors vehicle theft, the one
exception was robbery.

• The results suggested a decreasing trend for identity theft clearance rate to robbery
clearance rate

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 Incident count of offense
The third research question:
What were the predomination demographics characteristics associated with victims and offenders of identity theft ?

For the variable of gender

• Interestingly, the majority of offender were female that 63%, while the majority of
victims were male that 37%.
For the variable of race

• Victims were predominately white by 72%, while offenders were predominately

African American by 69%
For the variable of age

• The average victims was much older than average offender, victims ranged in
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age from (5-81) with a mean age of 41 years old, offenders ranged in age

• From ( 28-49) with mean age of 32years old

Incident count of offense

For the variable of prior relationship

• Result of this study indicated that most victims didn’t know the offender, while 41%
of the victims and offenders did have some sort of prior relationship, and 59%
didn’t.

For the variable of employment status

• Results indicated that 53% were unemployed, 41% were employed, 3% retired,
3% disabled.

For the variable of number of offender

• The majority of the crimes 64% were committed by lone offender, 33% involved
two offenders, and 3% involved three offenders .
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Limitation of study

 This study collect data from police department, so it may be

many crimes unreported.

 This study focus at the use NIPRS data which was relatively
new source of crime data that suffered from lack of cooperation .

 The low regarding identity thief was relatively new, 1999.

 there was a time lag between there new database coming online
and the police department personal switching over to it

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THANK YOU!

Email:
Maryam.tareq@pass.ps