Philadelphia ranks well in cybercrime report, but concern remains

In partnership with Temple University’s Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab, the university’s capstone journalism class, students Chelsea Leposa and Jared Pass will cover neighborhood technology issues for Technically Philly and Philadelphia Neighborhoods through May.
Like so many others, Kenneth Swope, a hard-working tile setter and self-described family man, was taken advantage of when his identity was stolen.
“[Someone] got a hold of my social security number, and opened up a couple accounts in my name,” Swope, 50, says.
He didn’t find out that his identity had been compromised until he applied for a home equity loan to pay for his daughters’ college tuition. When he applied, he found something on his credit report that shouldn’t have been there. “I had to call the credit company to find out who opened the account, and they wouldn’t tell me. They said it was me,” Swope says.
After some investigation, he found that the accounts were listed under his parents’ home address, where he had never lived.
Swope suspected a relative who had been living at the address, but
because he wasn’t sure—no charges have been brought against anyone—he faced difficulties with credit agencies. “Every creditor and credit agency wanted me to prove everything,” Swope says, “but nobody wanted the person who opened the fraudulent accounts to prove anything.”

In 2009, there were 336,655 complaints of cybercrime reported to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, a 22 percent increase from 2008. The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is a joint operation between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center. IC3 receives victim’s complaints of cybercrime and refers them to the appropriate local, state or federal law enforcement agency for investigation.
There were also $559 million in losses associated with complaints in 2009, an all-time high. “The number of complaints IC3 receives increases each year,” says Carie Lemley, IC3’s complaint supervisor.
The reason is obvious, Special Agent Brian Herrick of the Philadelphia FBI Cyber Squad says. The Internet has grown from about 400,000 users to 1.5 billion users in the past nine years. “There is an increased population online, so there will be an increase in the criminal element as well,” Herrick says.

Of 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania ranks seventh in the number of complaints filed. Pennsylvania constitutes 3.4 percent of IC3’s total complaints, just behind Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Florida and California.
Philadelphia, however, was ranked the 38th riskiest city out of the 50 most populous cities for Internet-related crime, according to Symantec’s report of the top 10 riskiest online cities, making it the 12th safest city for Internet use. This could be related to the city’s 60 percent home Internet adoption rate.
Philadelphians spend less on home and mobile Internet than most major cities, according to Norton’s report. Only Miami, St. Louis, Cleveland and Detroit spend less per household on Internet. Similarly, only 58 percent of adults in Philadelphia are engaging in some kind of internet use, compared to 75 percent of adults in the most wired cities, like Seattle. However, Philadelphia is ranked 16th for cybercrime, which is relatively high given the low amount of internet access throughout the city.
“Where you have greater amounts of population you will have greater crime in the traditional sense, that’s the same online as well,” Herrick says.
He doesn’t see Philadelphia has having more cybercrime than any other major city because cybercrime is not as geographic as traditional crimes. The perpetrator is usually someone the victim doesn’t know, and more than likely cybercriminals will attack people in a different state or country.

“We may start an investigation in Philadelphia and there is a likely chance that if the victim is here then the actor may not be,” said Herrick.
For instance, Herrick had a case in which a local university’s server was hacked, and the perpetrator turned up in New Zealand.
This kind of criminal anonymity is true for Mary Lou DiMaggio’s father, Lewis Shields, who recently had his identity stolen. Unlike Swope, DiMaggio still has no idea who stole her father’s identity and how the perpetrator got a hold of his personal information.
DiMaggio discovered her father’s personal information had been compromised when she went to cash a check in a joint account that had both her’s and her father’s names on it. There she was told that she wrote a check for $5,000 when she never had. “It turns out it was a check they thought I had written, but it was a fraudulent signature,” DiMaggio says.
The check was a perfect match, it had all the relevant information, such as the account number and DiMaggio’s home address, but the signature was wrong. “It was my father’s perfect check with my imperfect signature,” she says, “and it was detected through the clearing house.”
DiMaggio is still trying to resolve the situation which began last November. Similarly, it took Swope about six months and about 100 hours on the phone to recover his identity.
“I talked to all the credit agencies and creditors and no one would listen to me at all, until I filed a police report,” he says.
The incident with her father has infuriated DiMaggio because her father can’t access the money he rightfully earned. “It’s just such a violation,” she says. “It’s just amazing to me that someone can work that long and that hard and have no access to the money that he’s entitled too.”
It also has DiMaggio thinking about protecting her own identity. “I was never big on shredding or burning because I never thought it would apply to me.”
“Before I started working here [IC3] I didn’t understand the level of fraud that was out there,” says Lemley, IC3’s complaint supervisor.
See a video about cyber crime. Story continues below…
[viddler id-284b0eb4 h-357 w-420]
Non-delivered merchandise or payments, identity theft, credit card fraud, auction fraud and computer fraud were the top five types of cybercrime reported in 2009, according to IC3’s Internet Crime Report [PDF]. Email phishing scams, lottery scams and relationship fraud also tend to be favorites for cybercriminals. However, Lemley says that “usually cybercrime trends will mutate based on what’s currently happening.”
Lemley has recently seen a lot of work-at-home scams, most likely due to the current increase in unemployment. 
“I suggest you research a company before you apply for a job online, because all they need is for you to fill out a form and give them some personal identifiers, then you’ve been a victim of identity fraud,” People seem to have too much trust online, when they shouldn’t because they have no idea who they are actually dealing with, she says.
Herrick has also seen an increase in child identity theft. “Many people don’t realize that a child’s identity can be stolen just like an adult’s,” he says. Criminals don’t steal people’s identities to become them. Instead, they want to hide behind them and have access to their good credit.
“If you steal the identity of a 21-year-old, that crime may be found out very soon, but if you steal the identity of an 8 or 9-year-old it may be years before that child’s credit report is checked,” says Herrick. He recommends that all people, adults and children, check their credit reports on a regular basis.
Regularly checking credit reports and closely examining credit card statements is the best way for people to protect themselves. It’s also important for people to do research when shopping online and applying for jobs online. “Don’t rush into any transaction, and if it looks too good to be true than it probably is.”
Click here for more information about current cybercrime trends or to file a complaint. Also, you can check your credit report at AnnualCreditReport.com.