Overseas cases often lead U.S. cops stumped

December 9, 2010 – 1:06 pm

Picture this: you get your credit card bill, and like a good consumer, you check through the statement to be sure everything is on the up-and-up. But you’re shocked to find that there’s thousands of dollars worth of items you didn’t buy or authorize.

You’ve been victimized by identity theft. But what if you find that the criminal who’s behind this isn’t even located in the United States? What then?

Sheriff’s deputies in Independence County, Ark. are currently facing just such a situation, as case after case has been filed in that area centering around a criminal that has been traced overseas. The problem is that since the crook isn’t in this country, it’s hard for the deputies to do anything.

The cases have a common thread: individuals receiving phone calls from the bank saying their accounts are overdrawn. Once the account owners check their accounts, they find withdrawals made from overseas.

While it is difficult for investigators to pin down exactly how the victims’ personal information was stolen, they do have a fairly good guess – Internet transactions.

“If you’ve purchased something off the Internet, somehow (thieves) found a way to hack into it and gain your information,” said Detective Jeff Sims, with the Independence County Sheriff’s Office.

Sims says that just because a site looks legitimate doesn’t mean it is. Before you decide to make a purchase, check to see if the site is secure. Look at the URL; you should see “https” instead of “http” or a padlock icon, if the site is secure.

Sims says the hard part is figuring out where the crime originated, and therein lies the problem in investigating and prosecuting the case.

“Say someone has a fraud that occurs and it leads back to France. Did it occur in France or in (the town in which they live)?” he said. He added that once the crime is traced to a specific country, very often by that time the source accounts are closed or don’t exist.

If you choose to shop online this holiday season, be sure you use secure sites. You may wish to consider using PayPal or a similar site to pay for the items you purchase.

Bookmark It