Identity theft complaints soared in 2011

Identity theft is alive and thriving. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission's Consumer Sentinel Network reports a significant increase in complaints.

On July 1, in Rankin County, Miss., three men were indicted after police, during a traffic stop, discovered 485 credit cards and gift cards hidden behind their car's dashboard. The defendants' names were on some of the cards, but when police scanned the cards' magnetic strips, names of other credit card holders came up. 

On Aug. 2, 2011, the U.S. Secret Service joined forces with the Gallatin, Tenn., police department to investigate reports of 94 incidents of fraudulent credit card charges of $90 to $100 each originating from a Florida business. Fraudsters used all the victim's cards in the Volunteer State Community College area. Investigators believed the perpetrators collected the victims' card data via a card skimmer inside an area card swipe machine.

These actual examples are representative of the thousands of identity theft cases that victims report to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and are listed in its Consumer Sentinel Network (CSN) Data Book, which it began in 1997.