Senator Maria Cantwell: Fighting Identity Theft

IDENTITY THEFT STATISTICS

• Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the United States.
  
• Washington state ranks 8th in the nation in identity theft crimes per capita.
  
• 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.
  
• According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, the average victim spends 607 hours to clear his or her credit records.
  
• The Federal Trade Commission estimates that identity theft costs the average victim $1,000.
  
• The Identity Theft Resource Center recently published a report, Identity Theft: The Aftermath 2003, that details the scope of the identity theft problem, explains how criminals steal personal information and how they abuse it, and includes suggestions for victims. You can download the entire report as a PDF file by clicking here . Note: You must have the Adobe Acrobat file viewer program on your computer to read the newsletter. If you do not have Adobe Acrobat, you can download a free version here .
  

Source: Office of the Washington state Attorney General

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