Using a Forensic Accountant to Counteract Personal Identity Theft

Over the years, personal identity theft has become one of the most common ways criminals use to accomplish their embezzling schemes. Every year millions of pounds are illegally tendered to businesses by thieves, under the disguise of being legitimate customers. The collecting of another individuals name, birth date, address, credit card numbers, etc. are vital pieces of information that allow a thief to be able to establish a new identity that is really no identity of their own, but a fake version of you. With this new fraudulent identity they then can embezzle products or money from unsuspecting businesses, purchasing goods and services free of charge to them, while simultaneously destroying your credit.

Thieves get this vital information from various sources. Sometimes it can be from your own trash-can (should you not have properly shredded or destroyed sensitive documents). At other times it can even be through the intercepting of your mail. Still at other times it's from unprotected computer systems that have allowed spyware to be installed and are now sending private data to the criminals. Whether on a corporate level or personal one though, the stealing of this sensitive data leads to problems, but before discussing who you need to handle that problem, first take some measures to protect yourself.

Make sure that you keep all of your sensitive data in a secure location. Most people prefer to store their information digitally these days. Just be sure that whatever application you choose to use encrypts your account numbers, pin numbers, etc. You want a system that locks the data and makes it unreadable if the computer itself is ever lost or stolen. As you can probably imagine, this could be a real issue if you keep this vital data on your laptop and you happen to lose it. Also make sure that your computer systems have the latest anti-virus/anti-skyward available. This will certainly help prevent unnoticed, behind the scenes smuggling of your sensitive data. Also, look at your credit history periodically and make sure that everything listed is your own. This goes for your business credit reports as well. Often times people may even set-up business accounts with major retail suppliers in the name of a business, but using your personal data. If you find an illegitimate entry on the report, dispute it immediately so that it can be removed.

If you aren't able to advert a fraud or a theft problem and you end up losing money behind a scam, your best option is to look into forensic accounting. Forensic accounting focuses on tracking transactions and building paths that can often be used to trace where the fraud began and thereby even assist in tracking down who committed the crime. Forensic accountants specialize in this work and are usually able to make a quick case of the situation, so don't just try to rely on anyone that's not trained in the work. Forensic accounting will tell you exactly how large the problem currently is, how far it can spread based on what data was gathered, and can possibly even tell you immediately based on the trail of evidence who is responsible for the crime, and then help you get the money back.

So protect yourself as best as possible from today's threats, but if worse comes to worse, use forensic accounting to give you a hand in tracking down the thief and recouping your loss.