The Times: Essential news from the L.A. Times

The nightmare that is identity theft

Episode Summary

When utilities reporter Jessica Roy had her identity stolen, untangling it was a never-ending nightmare.

Episode Notes

Jessica Roy was hanging with friends at a piano bar when her wallet was stolen — and became a victim of identity theft. Roy filed the necessary reports and thought she’d be able to handle everything pretty quickly. That didn’t happen.

Today, she shares her ordeal and explains why fixing identity theft is a never-ending nightmare and why recovering from it is so much harder than you think.

Read the full transcript here.

Host: Gustavo Arellano

Guests: Assistant Utility Journalism team editor Jessica Roy

More reading:

My wallet was stolen at a bar. Then my identity theft nightmare began

Are you the victim of identity theft? Here’s what to do

Is identity theft protection worth it? Here’s what you should know

Episode Transcription

Gustavo: The day after Thanksgiving 2018, my colleague Jessica Roy was doing what she always likes to do on that day.

Gustavo: She was hanging with friends at a piano bar in her hometown of San Francisco, singing her heart out.

Gustavo: But then…

Jessica Roy: I went to pay my bill at the end of the night, and when I reached into my purse, my wallet was gone.

Gustavo: She became a victim of identity theft, which hit nearly 1.4 million people last year alone. Jessica filed the necessary reports and thought she'd be able to handle everything pretty quickly. That didn't happen.

Jessica: If somebody had said, you might get your identity stolen and you should freeze your credit, I probably would've been like, meh, I, keep a close eye on that stuff. Like, I'm not super worried. And I would've been wrong.

Roger Grimes: I think a lot of people would be shocked that the banks aren't trying as hard as you think they are to significantly decrease the amount of fraud. Most of what we're doing to stop internet crime is doomed to failure.

Gustavo: I'm Gustavo Arellano. You're listening to “The Times: Essential News from the L.A. Times.” It's Monday, Dec. 12, 2022. Today, why fixing identity theft is a nightmare that never ends. And why recovering from it is so much harder than you'd think.

Jessica Roy is an assistant editor on the L.A. Times' Utility Journalism Desk. Jessica, welcome to “The Times.”

Jessica: Hi. Thanks so much for having me.

Gustavo: So horrible to hear. The one time I lost my wallet, it was at Dallas airport and I completely freaked out. But before I even called anyone to cancel anything, someone actually emailed me and they said, what address could they send it to, and I thought it was a scam because like, no way. Or maybe they're gonna mess with me. But a couple of days later, I got it back with everything in it and they said, you don't have to give me any money. It was just my husband found it.

Jessica: Oh, that's so nice.

Gustavo: It was so nice. So I'm sure you thought something like that would happen, Jessica, because you know, when you lost your wallet, you'd hope that Americans are fundamentally nice people, so the wallet would've gotten back to you.

Jessica: Well, I did not think I had lost it. I was certain somebody had taken it, somebody had reached into my purse and plucked it out of there. There was no other way it could have gone. I actually wasn't really worried about the contents of the wallet itself. I only kept my driver's license and like $10 in cash. Really nothing. And like one credit card and one debit card in there. I know the risks of having your whole life in your wallet. I would've never kept my Social Security card. I was the most upset that I had a punch card to Skin Laundry, which is a very pricey facial place in Beverly Hills. And when you get 10, you get a free facial. And I had nine! Devastating.

Gustavo: Oh my God, that's horrible. So you canceled all your credit cards, you filed a police report.

Jessica: I thought that was the end of it. I was like, no harm, no foul. These things happen. And then about a month and a half later, mid-January of 2019, I came home one day and checked the mail, and I had these two huge envelopes.

Jessica: And one was from Wells Fargo and one is from Bank of America, neither of which I bank with.

Jessica: And I opened them and they were both like, “Congratulations on your new checking account and your new savings account. We're so glad you're a customer, blah, blah, blah.” It didn't quite hit me right away what had happened.

Jessica: And I'm like, oh, they must have sent me this by accident, and then I got a phone call following up on my Target credit card application. And it was at that point that I was like, oh, someone else is doing this. This is not a mistake. So I leapt into action. I froze my credit with all three credit bureaus.

Gustavo: So a freeze on your credit, what does that mean?

Jessica Roy: There are three credit bureaus, TransUnion, Experian and Equifax, and they all maintain files on you. If you have interacted with the American financial system in any way, they have that information on you. And when you try to do something like open a new Target credit card, Target will check with those bureaus and they'll say, “Oh, that's Jessica Roy. She lives at this address and her credit is good or bad. She has this many delayed payments or not.” If you freeze your credit, any bank that tries to open a line of credit for you will reach out and say, “Hey, Equifax, who's this Jessica Roy person?” And they'll say, “Her file is frozen,” which means they can't get the information about me. So they won't approve a new line of credit for me because they don't have any information on me.

Jessica: The problem is that the people who stole my identity already opened two checking accounts. And they had checkbooks now.

Jessica: And they went on a crazy bad-check-writing spree all across Northern California. It was crazy. It was crazy how big of checks they tried to write. I think that the biggest one was like $14,000 at a Big Lots.

Gustavo: Big Lots. You could spend $14,000 out of Big Lots?

Jessica : I don’t know. I don't know what you can buy at Big Lots. Uh, the store. The whole store.

Gustavo: Wow.

Jessica: It was wild. 

Jessica: And they wrote a check for their friend's bail bond, and then their friend skipped bail. And so I was sent to collections for the first time in my life for that one.

Jessica: So I froze my credit and once again, I was like, OK, now we're set. That was annoying and a little freaky, but I was proactive and did what I was supposed to do. That's the end of it.

Jessica: And then in April I got a phone call.

Paul Turo: Hi, this message is for Jessica Roy. This is Paul reaching out to you because I have reason to believe your information may have been used in a rental which was deemed to be fraudulent.

Jessica: They had used a company called Turo, which is like a car rental service. They'd rented quote-unquote a Tesla using my driver's license as proof, and then they had taken off with it.

Lisa Paragon: This message is for Jessica. This is Lisa at Paragon Subrogation on behalf of…

Jessica: Later I got a call from an investigator with an insurance company about a car crash I had allegedly been in, in a BMW. I had presented my driver's license at the scene of the crime and now they were following up with my insurance about it.

Gustavo: Oh my God.

Jessica: I really, really think they had a good time. So I'm envious in some ways, but mostly, I felt furious. I drove a Sentra. I've never even driven a Tesla. I really felt over and over again like I was victimized twice. I didn't do anything wrong, and yet it is my responsibility to untangle all of this. There were people who stole my wallet and stole my identity, but then there was all of the government and financial institutions that allowed that to happen. There are things that could have been put in place that would've prevented this and they didn't exist, and they still don't exist.

Gustavo: It seems wack that the thieves manage to do all this with just your driver’s license and a couple of credit cards. They must have gotten your Social Security number, too, somehow.

Jessica: Right.

Jessica: The idea that your Social Security number is private — anyone, anyone listening to this? — no, it's not. It exists on the internet and it is vulnerable. You know we all hear, “Oh, you've been a victim of a data breach, blah, blah, blah,” and you're all, at this point, I feel like we've all gotten so many of them that it's like, “OK, whatever.”

Jessica: Like the Equifax breach in 2017... 

 “Equifax says criminals were able to exploit a U.S. website to access…”

Jessica: If you were a victim of that. All the information that thieves got on me, that's available for you somewhere.

News clip: “That's enough for crooks to steal the identities and run up massive bills and drain bank accounts.”

Jessica: So I spoke to Ava Velasquez from the Identity Theft Resource Center multiple times over the course of reporting this article, and something she said was, yeah, this information is available about just about everyone online, and pretty much anyone can get ahold of it and it's not very hard to do or very expensive.

Ava Velasquez: Look at the dark web. They are giving away Social Security numbers. They have been so ubiquitously compromised that they are available essentially for free.

Ava: Once a thief has your driver's license and your Social Security number, they have all the information that they need to apply for basically anything. A car loan, a new phone, a payday loan, store credit cards, new checking accounts, the world is their financial oyster. You don't have to be a criminal mastermind to perpetrate this kind of fraud. It is so darn easy.

Gustavo: Why didn't freezing your credit just stop all of this?

Jessica: Well, for starters, they had already opened the bank accounts and apparently had the physical checkbooks. You know, you can't claw back the physical checkbooks from someone at that point. Another issue is that, and this was something that I didn't know beforehand, the three credit bureaus are not the end-all, be-all of your financial identity. There are more than a hundred different bureaus. There's one for when you set up new utilities. Things like opening up a new phone account won't necessarily go through the big three credit bureaus. It might go through a different one. 

Jessica: There's no button you can press anywhere. There's no way to be like, lock my life down, freeze my Social Security number from being used. That could exist. It does not exist right now.

Gustavo: After the break, Jessica tries to fight back and gets put on hold.

Gustavo: So, Jessica, your wallet was stolen. Six months later, you're still getting calls and emails about all these crazy things that the people who stole your identity were doing in your name. Stealing cars, crashing cars, spending money. Fourteen thousand dollars on Big Lots. I will never be able to get over that. And you're trying to get your life back together. How did you start to fight back?

Jessica: I started by calling the 1-800 number that's on the piece of mail that the bank sent me and I thought, I was like, I am doing them a favor. By calling them and letting them know, “Hey, the person who's opened this isn't me.” I am certainly not footing the $14,000 check to Big Lots. So like, you guys had better shut that down, and I learned immediately that it's very difficult to get through to a human being. 

“We appreciate your patience…”

Jessica: I wish I had written down how long that I spent on each call. I think probably 80 to a hundred hours total of active work. 

“Please continue to hold for the next available associate.”

Jessica: For the most part, banks consider this kind of crime the cost of doing business. Banks write off these expenses. Banks would rather pay for a hundred bad charges and have to write off a hundred bad checks at Big Lots than prevent one person from legitimately becoming their customer.

Gustavo: So it sounds like whenever you do eventually get a hold of someone who can help you... the banks will eat the cost, but little else. Doesn't really help with the time and stress of having to fix all of it, though.

Jessica: You know, I was working, obviously, a full-time job and then every day I came home and I remember feeling my heart pound. I would take the mountain of mail that I'd received that day, ’cause sometimes I was getting stuff every single day. And then I'd have to start making phone calls again. And I would have to call up the banks and sit on hold. Anybody who's ever fought an automated hold menu has been there. And I had to do that every single day. And then adding in the amount of time I lay awake at night stressing about it, it was horrible.

Gustavo: Your story mentions some really shocking stats. Ninety-two percent of the people who had identity theft inflicted upon them had trouble sleeping. Seventeen percent developed addiction problems. Ten percent reported feeling suicidal. What kind of toll did getting your identity stolen have on you?

Jessica: I felt like I would never get out from under it. I didn't know how to make it stop.

Jessica: When I had had my wallet stolen, I'd had a miscarriage a couple months earlier. And I remember talking to my therapist about all this and she said, I, I think the stress of dealing with this is part of why you're having trouble getting pregnant again.

Jessica: And it was also, my husband and I were in the process of saving up to buy a house, and so there was so much impetus for me to get these things removed from my credit. I just felt totally out of control. I didn't do anything wrong. And I am the victim of a crime, and now I am also the victim of this horrible system that didn't do anything to stop this from happening and now won't do anything to help me.

Gustavo: But finally, an angel came into your life to help you on this case.

Jessica: Yes. I found out that the Berkeley police were trying to get in touch with me.

“Hi, Jessica. This is Lt. Dave Lindenau calling you back in reference to, uh, your identity theft stuff going on.”

Jessica: They said two people were arrested and they had a bunch of people's identity information. They had people's driver's licenses, they had credit cards, and your name was among the victims. And, yes, they had a box of Cheez-Its in the trunk of their car, stuffed full of checkbooks, including one with my name on it.

Gustavo: Wow. I don't think I've ever heard of this angel before — Cheez-Its. So after that, hopefully your nightmare was over?

Jessica: I thought so. Those people got arrested. It turned out they were both on felony probation for identity-theft-related crimes. Then I was like, OK, great. They arrested them. They can't keep stealing my identity from a jail cell, so it's all good. I'm all good. I'm set. And I was wrong.

Jessica: I was at work. I was at my desk at the L.A. Times. And I got a phone call at my office desk. And I picked it up and it was this guy and he started rambling this story about, he was on his way to the police and his girlfriend or his ex-girlfriend had, has, she was trying to kill him or she, she tried to kill him. And when you're a reporter, you get, you get phone calls and emails sometimes that tell a long, rambling story and you're like, mmm, OK. Um, but then he's like, I think she's stealing your identity.

Jessica: And I knew this had to be different people. The two people who'd been arrested previously, they were in jail at that time, so it could not have been them. It was someone else. As far as I can tell, he was turning over on his girlfriend and hoping I would call the police and they would arrest her for identity theft. And he was wrong.

Jessica: I went to the West Hollywood Sheriff's Department, and I said, I need to file a report about my identity being stolen and, you know, I think I know some leads for you, some names on who did it. And they were like, no, no. It has to be the police up in Richmond, which is where this person lives, so we're not going to do it. So I called the Richmond police station. They said, no, it has to originate in the county where the victim lives. So I went back to the West Hollywood sheriff's station. I'd kept every single piece of physical mail that I'd received and all the police reports and everything in a couple file folders. And I brought those with me. And I just remember putting them down on the, the main desk sergeant's desk and being like, here's what happened to me, starting wallet stolen, banks, everything I've just told you. And at the end, I just remember him kind of like sighing and going, “So, you believe yourself to be the victim of identity theft.” And I slammed my hands down on his desk and went, “I am the victim of identity theft! I want you to take a report and I'm not leaving until you do.”

Jessica: The police clearly had absolutely no interest in investigating my case. Certainly not in solving it. And while reporting this, I wondered why that was, and one of the people I spoke to was Roger Grimes, who's a cybersecurity expert. And he had some insights on why that is.

Roger: It's really difficult to get arrested committing cybercrimes. It's very low risk and high reward. If they rob an online bank for a million dollars, they're gonna serve less time than a person that robbed a real bank without a gun of $2,000. You're more likely to be hit by lightning than caught and you can steal millions of dollars.

Jessica: A couple days after New Year's 2020, I got a voicemail from the Vacaville police and they said two people were arrested in a car and I asked the officer, I said, could I guess their names? And I guessed the name of the guy who called me and his girlfriend. That was them.

Gustavo: Oh my God… After the break. What to do if your identity has been stolen, and some strategies that you can use to protect yourself before it happens.

Gustavo: Jessica, your regular job when you're not fighting to get your identity back, you're an assistant editor on The Times’ Utility Journalism team. So that means you and your team put together practical solutions to help readers figure out what can be done about various things, including this thing. Those were exactly the questions that I had when I got to the end of your story. I mean, clearly what I thought was enough to try to fix whatever might happen if my identity or the identity of somebody that I know if, if, it was stolen, those things that we thought… really weren't enough. How can we make our financial system safer for everyone?

Jessica: The big thing we need to do is stop relying on Social Security numbers for identification. Even in the 1930s, when we first started using these, they were like, it'd be crazy if we attached these to your, you know, bank accounts and stuff. And then because it was easy to do, we did. And we ended up with that. So we have a very, very bad system that we knew was bad when we started it almost a hundred years ago. And we have just stuck to it. Uh, [laughs] we, we probably need to address that and stop relying on Social Security numbers.

Jessica: And in the state of California, there's no way to flag a stolen driver's license. That seems bad. Broadly, there should be a way, for free, to totally freeze your identity to say, sign up with your name, address, date of birth, Social Security number, and say, don't allow anybody to do any—  No payday loans. No car loans. No new checking accounts. No phones. No nothing. And then another solution that would've made my life a lot easier is if hard inquiries didn't land on your credit reports, if they're frozen. There's no reason a frozen account should get pickaxed by somebody trying to get a loan for a Jeep, which they tried to do in my case.

Gustavo: A Jeep, a Tesla, a BMW. Where's Lamborghini?

Jessica: Must be nice.

Gustavo: OK. On an individual level, if someone's identity does get stolen, what should folks be doing?

Jessica: The very first thing you should do is what I said, freeze your credit. I froze my identity with something called Checks Systems, which is one of the bureaus that governs checking accounts. You can also file again with identitytheft.gov through the FTC, and they will give you an individual plan to address your identity theft. And then filing with the FBI, IC3 complaint. Neither the FTC nor the FBI are going to investigate your case. But, it's helpful to have those things just to prove that it wasn't you and that's part of your evidence.

Jessica: One thing I started to do, very first thing, was I started a new Google Doc file. You can do a Word file. And I wrote down who I called, the name of the person that I spoke to, what they said. And I said, is there a ticket number or a case number that I can refer back to? And that was so helpful to have because this was all such an insane, bureaucratic nightmare. And being able to say, “Well, actually, I spoke to Logan on March 3rd, and he said blah, blah, blah,” really helped expedite getting people to pay attention to my case and you know, they had to take me more seriously when they saw how seriously I was taking it.

Jessica: Another thing you can do is contact the Identity Theft Resource Center. I didn't realize that this existed. It's a nonprofit advocacy group that helps victims with complex cases like mine. You know, if you had asked me before all this happened, Jessica, are you someone who's at risk of identity theft? I would've said, no. I had unique passwords on all of my bank accounts and my main Gmail account. And I had two-factor authentications set up. And that helps a lot. If you're listening to this and you don't have those things, do that right now.

Jessica: Another thing you can do proactively is you can freeze your credit with all three bureaus. That's not gonna prevent 100% of new accounts of any kind from being open, but it's a big first step. And you can do that, that is free. It only took about 15 minutes. I was actually surprised at how easy it was. And there's also a lot of sites that offer free credit monitoring. If you're not ready to pay for something like identity theft protection, signing up with services like Credit Karma and things like that. Again, they won't alert you to every single kind of new account that has been opened. But they started alerting me really early on of like, “Hey, you've applied for a new Target card. Is this new account yours? New inquiry from Equifax.” So that was really helpful to have.

Gustavo: Finally, Jessica, where do things stand for you now after all of this? Are you, do you still have to deal with all of that?

Jessica: So my husband and I saved up and we were ready to buy a place in June of 2020. And so I unfroze my credit. And at like 4 o'clock in the morning I got a text that said, “Congratulations on applying for your new checking account with blah, blah, blah.” And I called the bank first thing in the morning in tears, so I was able to fortunately shut down that checking account from, from being created, and then froze my credit again. But that is the last I heard from my identity thieves. 

Jessica: However, I assume at some point, my number will be up again and they'll try it again. People have compared it to having a chronic condition. You have to expect there are gonna be flare-ups and it's something you have to be vigilant about and you have to maintain.

Gustavo: Have you been back to that bar in San Francisco?

Jessica: Oh, yes.

Jessica: My father-in-law has played piano and sang there for more than 25 years. And so yes, I have been back. I was back there just last week. It was great. We had a great time. I kept a very close eye on my wallet.

Gustavo: Jessica Roy, thank you so much for this conversation.

Jessica Roy: Thank you.

Gustavo:  And that's it for this episode of “The Times: Essential News From the L.A. Times.” Maya Kroth was the jefa on this episode along with Jazmin Aguilera, and Mark Nieto mixed and mastered it. 

Gustavo: Our show's produced by Denise Guerra, Kasia Broussalian, David Toledo and Ashlea Brown. Our editorial assistants are Roberto Reyes and Nicolas Perez. Our engineers are Mario Diaz, Mark Nieto, Mike Heflin. Our editor is Kinsee Morlan. Our executive producers are Jazmin Aguilera, Shani Hilton and Heba Elorbany. And our theme music is by Andrew Eappen.

Gustavo: I'm Gustavo Arellano. We'll be back Wednesday with all the news and desmadre.