Would You Notice $400,000 Missing From Your Checking Account?

by Rick Kam

In an article published in the New York Times by Sewell Chan on October 2, 2007, Chan reports that Mayor Bloomberg fell victim to Identity Theft.

"In early June, Mr. Bostic deposited a $190,000 forged check into the Sovereign account and a $230,000 forged check into PNC account, according to prosecutors. Both of the forged checks were drawn on Mr. Bloomberg’s personal account at the Bank of America and were issued in the name of the mayor’s financial manager, Geller & Company."

You might ask could this happen to me?

The answer is yes. There are many types of financial and non-financial ID theft. Credit card fraud and someone withdrawing money from your checking account happens a lot.

You might say, "I have a service that freezes my credit or automatically sets fraud alerts to guarantee against ID theft". The answer is, these solutions will prevent the issue that happened to Bloomberg - an ID thief stealing money being taken from his checking account.

There are new services on the horizon that monitor credit, checking, and other forms of financial and non-financial personal data to detect misuse of your information and provide 360 degree protection. You will see these new services become available in the market and be more effective, but cost roughly what consumers pay today for less effective solutions. More on this in a future post....