ScamBusters: Military members often targeted by ID thieves
Identity theft is one of the most common ways people get scammed, and military service members are increasingly becoming big targets.
A poll by LifeLock says 60 million Americans have been affected by identity theft so far this year. According to the Federal Trade Commission, there were 113,000 reports of fraud from military members last year.
“Someone tried to file taxes with our Social Security number,” said James Patterson, a Korean War veteran.
A few years after Patterson and his wife filed their taxes with an online tax filing service, they received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service in two different states.
“Our eyes lit up when we got these letters,” Patterson said.
The letter from the IRS in both Minnesota and Missouri explained someone tried filing taxes with both their Social Security numbers.
“They noticed our Colorado address and thought something was suspicious,” Patterson said.
Patterson was one of tens of thousands of customers dealing with leaked information from a breach back in 2015.
“It’s scary people are stealing information that doesn’t belong to them,” Patterson said.
Security experts suggest the breach turned out to be a large-scale identity theft scam, where thieves were posing as legit taxpayers and stealing information through phishing attacks.
Phishing is the term that refers to how scammers entice their victims to reveal personal and financial information. It’s usually through the form of an email, but scammers can also can also call victims on the phone.
Det. Jon Price with the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office explained ‘phishing scammers’ are getting harder to track because they’re getting access to new technology like VPNs that mask IP addresses.
“They’re constantly using new tactics, and in this digital age it’s virtually impossible to trace them,” said Price.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, this type of fraud continues to be one of the biggest threats to our military communities across the nation. Research shows members of the military report more total losses from scams than civilians.
If you believe you are a victim of identity theft, make sure to contact one of the three credit reporting agencies and place a fraud alert on your account.
