11.05.03

U.S. Senate to OK Cantwell’s Tools for Identity Theft Victims

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today the U.S. Senate will approve U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell's identity theft bill, which will give identity theft victims and local law enforcement officials the tools they need to fight identity theft by making Washington state law federal law. Cantwell's bill, which was added to the Federal Credit Reporting Act, will spare victims' credit ratings from fraudulent transactions that are a result of identity theft and will enable victims to have access to business records of charges in their names made by identity thieves.

"This will help the nearly ten million Americans who were victims of identity theft last year clear their names and restore their credit history," Cantwell said on the Senate floor.

"The average victim spends 175 hours trying to clear his or her good name. I want my Web site to help cut down on the time they spend fixing their lives so they can move past this horrible crime," Cantwell stated.

According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, the average victim spends 175 hours to clear his or her credit records.

Cantwell's identity theft bill helps victims and law enforcement in four key ways:

1. It creates a national standardized process for a person to establish he or she is a victim of identity theft. Currently, without this standard, an identity theft may use a different address or Social Security number than the victim's, and a business will refuse to deal with the victim because they are unable to provide the correct verifying information.

2. It requires that, once a business has verified that an individual is a victim, the business has twenty days to provide all application and transaction records to the victim. These records include such critical information as where the identity thief is receiving mail, what Social Security number he or she is using, and what the thief's signature looks like. This information is critical to the victim in proving to creditors that they could not have made the charges they are being assessed.

3. It allows law enforcement to act as the victim's agent in obtaining business records. By allowing law enforcement to have quick access to this evidence, the amendment will improve the ability of law enforcement to find and prosecute identity thieves.

4. It ensures that ID theft victims are able to protect their credit rating from further damage by requiring credit reporting agencies to block information on fraudulent transactions resulting from identity theft. The provision will ensure that, with one phone call, consumers can have certainty that the bad information on their credit records will be blocked by credit reporting agencies and it will remain blocked while providing consumers a chance to demonstrate that the transaction is the result of fraud.

Businesses initially fought some of these provisions until Cantwell pointed out that they were losing $38 billion a year to identity theft.

Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the United States. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) found that complaints of identity theft increased 87 percent between 2001 and 2002, and over 161,000 complaints were received by the agency last year. A July 2003 study by Gartner, Inc. found that there was a 79 percent increase in identity theft in the past year alone.

The U.S. Secret Service has estimated that consumers nationwide lose $745 million to identity theft each year.

Cantwell's efforts to protect identity theft victims is supported by the Identity Theft Victim's Resource Center, the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Center for the Victims of Crime, and the Information Technology Industry Council.

Cantwell's original bill, The Identity Theft Victims Assistance Act, passed the Senate by unanimous consent in the 107 th Congress, but was never brought to a vote in the House. By adding her bill to the Federal Credit Reporting Act, which has passed the U.S. House of Representatives and will pass the U.S. Senate today, identity theft victims no longer have to wait for action from the other chamber.

###