Ok, we usually don’t write blog posts on identity theft crimes as we like to hold ourselves to a higher standard and provide great content and quite frankly that would have us posting multiple times every day and would just make the important content hard to find. This one, however, caught our eye and just goes to show you that identity thieves don’t care at all about the victim of their crimes.
Normally, when you think of individuals who an identity thief might target, it’s unlikely for your first guess would be a centenarian. It’s a little difficult to pass for someone that age, and the real person’s photograph may show up on Al Roker’s televised birth announcements on the morning news. If they do decide to target someone of a certain age, they should probably not choose Josephine McBride, the oldest graduate from Norfolk, Virginia’s citizen police academy.
The accused identity thief is Mark Hillard, who allegedly forged checks, used them to make purchases at local retail stores and then returned the items that he purchased for cash on a later date and at different establishments. Ironically, Hillard told the press that this was a case of mistaken identity, his identity. He says that police have gone after the wrong guy.
McBride said that she has no idea how thieves got a hold of her identity. This is a common problem among victims. Not everyone who gets taken by an identity thief leaves his or her wallet on a bus or forgets to password protect a laptop. That’s what makes an identity protection plan so important. It is nearly impossible to prevent identity theft on your own, even if you’re a wizened in years police officer.
One of the great things about having an identity theft protection plan is that even if you do become a victim, it does not have to be catastrophic. Think about how bad it could have been if the police had not caught this alleged culprit. Poor McBride could have found her bank account completely emptied. Unless, big unless, her protection plan alerted her to changes made to her finances that she wasn’t aware of. Perhaps this did happen, and that is how law enforcement got involved. Surely, this is the case in many a situation like this one. After all, there are about 10 million victims of identity theft per year in this country alone.