Buncombe County Government, NC Buncombe News Updates, 29 Jun 2011

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From YouTube: Buncombe News Update - Sheriff's Office Identity Theft Training

Description

The Buncombe County Sheriff's Office recently had various departmental participants receive identity theft training. Training was conducted by Lifelock and FBI LEEDA. With North Carolina being 24th in the nation in Identity Theft Crime, it's important for the Sheriff's Office to keep up with the technologies and methods used by fraudulent criminals. This Buncombe News Update goes over the training received by the Sheriff's office with interviews by Sheriff Van Duncan, Lifelock representative Tami Nealy, FBI LEEDA trainer H. Dean Crisp, and Dep. Robyn Michalove of the Sheriff's Office Crime Prevention Unit.

If you believe you're the victim of identity theft, contact the Sheriff's Office at 828.255.5000 and contact your bank and creditors to inform them of potential fraudulent transactions. For more information you can visit the Sheriff's Office web site at buncombecounty.org/sheriff or the Attorney General's Web Site at ncdoj.gov.

A

Well, identity theft continues to be more and more of an issue here in Buncombe County and across the state in the country, with people coming in trying to assume others identities and taking in different kinds of financial scams and fraud.

A

So we had the FBI leader group come in along with a company called lifelock that provides the straining to officers about how they can better help people guard against having their identity, stolen and finding those things out before they suffer a significant loss of credit, a significant loss of resources that somebody ends up having to pay the price for. So we were very glad to have this training available and have it come to town, and we had several officers from several different agencies coming in and receive this training. So.

B

We're here today in Asheville putting on an identity theft summit for law enforcement, we travel around the country, lifelock and FBI lita, and it's very important to us that we're going out there and educating the frontline that are dealing with these cases. Every day law enforcement are here to protect and serve the more. They know about the crime of identity theft, the tools, the trade, the better equipped that they are to help protect and serve those people within their communities. The Buncombe County Sheriff's Office, has graciously hosted this event.

B

Today we have nearly 30 law enforcement officials from this side of North Carolina here today, and what they're really learning from our instructor is what identity theft looks like right here in Asheville, what it looks like in Buncombe County and how it compares to other cities throughout the rest of the country, understanding that, if you go in and you file a police report with the Asheville Police Department saying that you've been a victim of identity theft, but the thief lives in Arizona.

B

We're teaching them today how to work with a Arizona law enforcement to be able to put a solid case together. They can get hand over to a prosecutor, and we can put these bad guys behind bars. The.

C

Things we're trying to do also is to better serve and help the victims of identity theft and when most people report identity, theft a lot of times. Police agencies are not really sure what to do or where to send them next and exactly how they can help them. So we're trying to to provide some tips, some information that can better serve the public North Carolina rates 24th in the nation, in identity theft. So we know it's a growing problem and we know that these officers are seeing more of this.

C

So with that, it comes experience in working these cases. But if you know the resources that you can use that are out there that can help, you can make a job a lot easier. One.

A

Of the things that we really wanted to do with the LifeLock training is be able to make our officers and other officers aware regionally of the expertise that people use when they, when they do identity theft and when they also do these financial crimes through the internet, using the internet and what we find in most situations as they go back through several different email addresses and locations that usually wind up overseas.

A

We also want to make sure that we let people know how they can be very careful about putting their information out there what's protected and what isn't? Because it continues to be more and more of an emerging problem for us. It.

D

Was excellent training, especially for me in crime prevention, because what I do is go and talk to the public and sort of public education settings and let them know the things that they can do to safeguard themselves against identity theft, which has become an insidious crime and can take years to repair the damage if ever and some folks have actually gone to jail as victims, not knowing that their identity has been compromised. Identity theft is the number one crime in the country.

D

Now it's going worldwide and international and we are so far behind in technology behind the criminals. So it's so important that we stay current on trends and this training was essential to me to help impart that knowledge to the public that they need to target harden themselves against identity theft and fraud. One.

A

Of the things that we've looked at alone with identity thefts are just scams that are being put out through the internet and a lot of times it takes our senior population. They tend to be a larger population of the folks who who are victims of this type of crime.

A

We have also worked with the land of sky Regional Council and putting together some basically educational programs for people who provide services services for the elderly long as long with some law enforcement agencies to kind of focus on this type of crime, this internet-based prime or computer-based crime. Our.

B

Society is so much more convenient now we just we can pay for our own gas at the pump and never have to show anybody our credit card. These conveniences are creating more and more opportunities for identity, thieves, people.

C

Realize that once their identity stolen, it's almost like it you've been violated to some degree getting that back and getting your credit cleared and finding out that you didn't buy a car three years ago and now you've it's been repossessed. It wasn't you that did that I can be very convivial II trying to help these folks out to get information to them. Have the officers prosecute these people and getting those folks them out if.

D

They do notice any erroneous charges or anything that they might suspect as fraud. They need to contact law enforcement immediately. They need to report it, they need to talk to their bank and each of their creditors. They need to contact their find out about if their credit report is showing any erroneous activity on it immediately and they can put a freeze on their credit.

D

They can actually go to the North Carolina Attorney General's website and they can freeze their own credit accounts and that way they would have to be contacted if someone is trying to use their credit, so they can do that and start that paper trail. That shows that they're actually actively involved in trying to safeguard their identity against fraud and theft.