Identity Theft - Credit Monitoring and Identity Theft Services

As numbers of personal identity theft continue to grow in the United States, the government becomes more and more concerned with finding ways to stop these criminals. The government is also beginning to recognize that they may not be able to fully stop these criminals, so laws are being implemented that will at least punish the criminals to a further extent once identity theft crimes are committed.

One of the most recent laws put in place by the United States Congress is the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act. This law was specifically set in place in 1998 to make identity theft an offense in its own right.

Under the Identity Theft and Deterrence Act, those criminals who knowingly use someone else’s identification with the intent to commit unlawful activity will be charged with a felony, finable by a maximum of 15 years in prison, fines and forfeiture of personal property.

This goes along with other laws already in place regarding different types of fraudulent activity. This may include mail fraud, credit card fraud, computer fraud or financial institution fraud. The Identity Theft and Deterence Act combined with other laws regarding fraud, criminals are receiving stiffer sentences for different types of identity theft crimes.

These many other forms of fraud that may be used in order to commit identity theft crimes will make criminals eligible for even stiffer sentences, as many cases of computer fraud, mail fraud and financial institution fraud care heavier sentences of up to 30 years imprisonment.

These laws set in place have helped capture identity theft criminals in major federal cases and keep them from repeat offending. Since 1998, more than 100 federal prosecution cases have been won. Most often these cases are large computer fraud or financial fraud scandals, where a variety of different victims are affected.

The hardest types of identity theft cases to prosecute for the government are all of the small identity theft cases that continue to pop up throughout the country. Since many cases are hard to track, it is often difficult to know who the criminal is in each case.

Many cases consist of something as small as a store clerk stealing a credit card number and using it once to purchase something online. Although the victim will recognize this and report it to the police and their credit card company, they may never find out who actually committed the crime.

With this in mind, it is still important to report any type of identity theft to the Federal Trade Commission in case there is a connection to another case. Even if the case is not resolved right away, federal prosecutors may be able to make a connection to other cases years down the road.

If enough information is available regarding the criminal, even in a one time, petty identity theft cases, new federal laws are imposed that set the minimum offense level as high as 10-16 months in jail. The hope by the Department of Justice is that setting high offense levels on even small identity theft criminals will begin to deter those from continuing to act.