Is Identity Theft a Serious Crime?

Many criminals consider identity theft to be a ‘victimless’ crime, justifying stealing money and running up charges on their targets accounts by relying on the fact that the account provider will just simply refund all of the charges, leaving the victim no worse off.  However the real truth is that many victims of this crime can have serious difficulties in resolving their cases and getting any fraudulent charges reimbursed to them (id theft protection service), and this can be a time consuming process that can actually costs them a lot of money in legal fees and other charges in the long run, so even if they do get their case resolved they are still out of pocket.  Also this type of crime can cause a great deal of stress and worry for the victims, and may leave them with frozen accounts and no access to money of their own for weeks or even months, and they may face penalties on missed bills and other repayments and have no way to buy food and other essentials until their accounts have been sorted out.  Identity theft is far from a victimless crime and has been compared in terms of stress and emotional impact to other more violent crimes, and there is a significant risk that the victim will not get their case resolved at all, leaving them facing the fraudulent charges and debts run up in their names.

Identity theft can also be used to fund and support some extremely serious criminal activity such as drug running, human trafficking and terrorism, and has been closely linked to many large international criminal gangs.  Because of the serious implications of identity theft crimes law enforcement officials (police, FBI, Secret Service and the President’s Identity Theft Task Force) and the Department of Justice work closely to track large identity theft rings and bring about convictions, and the maximum term for this type of crime includes a 15 year sentence (which can be increased if linked to other fraud crimes) and heavy fines.