Frank W. Abagnale - Stealing Your Life

Contents

In memory of

Joseph G. Shea

Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation

(Carl Hanratty)

The Sweetest Con of All

Anthony Dwight Stone was perfectly happy being Anthony Dwight Stone, for all of his first thirty-one years. This sense of contentment continued right up until the day, a few years ago, when he learned that Thomas Earl Batts had decided to also become Anthony Dwight Stone, and the world got a little too crowded.

The real Anthony Stone was driving through Nash County, North Carolina, when he was stopped for speeding. When his license was inspected, the police gave him the news that he was wanted for drug possession. Geez, he said, they had to be kidding. They werent, and he got tossed in jail for the night. Then the police showed him a picture that was supposedly him. It was of a man with his hair coiled in braids and a stomach that ran on forever who easily weighed three hundred pounds; Stone boasted curly hair and weighed 170, tops. He recognized the man right away. That was Thomas Earl Batts, his sisters boyfriend.

Being his sisters boyfriend had made it pretty easy for Batts to gather the necessary informationSocial Security number and a few other key factsand slip into Anthony Stones identity. And it certainly changed Anthony Stones view of what sisters are for.

As it turned out, Stone said, Batts had quietly appropriated Stones identity some ten years earlier and had been living right alongside him, using credit cards in Stones name to buy various necessary and unnecessary merchandise. He had gone and gotten a loan in Stones name to purchase a house. And out of force of bad habit, he had built up a tidy little rap sheet.

None of this was a good thing for Anthony Stone. Batts, for instance, didnt bother to keep current with his credit. But then, what did he care? He wasnt really Anthony Stone. And so the real Anthony Stone found himself branded as a congenital loser. He had an impossible time getting creditany credit. Doors of all kinds were shut in my face, he said. Hed apply for a job and would be promptly turned down; one time he found work and, after a lagging credit check, was whisked right out of a company car.

When he belatedly got around to applying to college, he got nothing but rejections, since his sketchy credit and criminal misdeeds werent quite what the admissions people had in mind for their incoming class. It didnt seem to matter that it wasnt his credit record or his criminal record. Id get into my apartment and get a notice six or seven times that I was evicted, he said. I felt like life had stopped.

It took years to untangle the mess. And Anthony Stone had to wonder, what if it happened again? Which is why he went to court and changed his name to Stone Tyler, essentially ceding his old identity to the dustbin. At the same time, he applied for a new Social Security number. He was laughed at and told it couldnt be done, but he ultimately did get it done. Basically, you cant get your Social Security number changed unless its life-threatening, he said.

Tyler, who lives in Durham, North Carolina, at last got into college and found a job with Blue Cross Blue Shield. Batts served a brief jail sentence, and that was it. For many people, the metamorphosis that Stone Tyler chosenew name, new Social Security numbermight seem like an extreme response to an admittedly awful situation, and I wouldnt recommend going quite that far. But from where he sat he saw no choice. This con was just too much for him.

His rude ordeal taught this young man, who had been leading an unremarkable life in North Carolina, that he lived in a new world in which all identities are at risk and, in essence, are in play.

I know cons, and right away I saw that this one was going to be the sweetest of all. For the past thirty-two years, ever since forsaking my foolish teenage infatuation with perpetrating swindles, Ive been a professional expert in how to prevent fraud. Nearly twenty years ago, as I was busy trying to help banks and businesses stop the spiraling increase in rubber checks and wily embezzlement schemes, it became obvious to me that a brand-new fraud, still in its formative stages and without even a clarifying name, was destined to overwhelm all the others as the clear crime of choice. In fact, it was a crooks dream come true, the sort of surefire caper that makes a career criminal glad he ignored his mothers advice and picked the wrong side of the law.

Years before, I would never have guessed that it could even be invented, for it was the most incredible but also the simplest crime ever perpetrated. And if I manage to live forty more years, it will remain the simplest crime ever committedand the most profitable.

This festering crime is what we now know as identity theft, the wholesale lifting of someones identity for illicit gain. Its stealing that identity, then using it to access a persons bank account, their personal information, and their personal finances. Its becoming someone else for the bucks.

Why did I think it contained such enormous promise for thieves? First of all, it is elementary to pull off. If you have my name, my date of birth, and my Social Security number, thats pretty much all you need in order to become me. It takes very little investment capital. A phone and a cheap computer will get you started. If you want to write phony checks, youll need a few vital tools like a blow-dryer, cake pans, and a common household chemical. You can pick them up at your nearest discount drugstore, and no one will be the wiser.

Then, the rewards are enormous. Identity theft will afford you access not only to someones wallet and bank account but to his very life and character, his entire ability to borrow and spend. Are you worried about the law? No need. Technology has made identity theft easy to execute behind the shadowy cloak of a computer keyboard. You dont even have to be in the same city, or country, as your victim. You can steal someones identity without being able to speak his language or pronounce her name.

Moreover, law enforcement cares less about identity theft than it does about double-parked cars and public loiterers. Your chances of getting caught are minuscule. But even if you do get caught, you are unlikely to spend a single night in jail. Swiping a kids bike might have graver consequences.

When I ran all these things through my mind, they unnerved me to no end. And my long-dormant criminal instincts stirred a little and made me think, Why didnt they invent this con back when I could have used it?

When I was passing phony checks in other peoples names more than thirty years ago, for example, it took me three months and a million-dollar Heidelberg printing press to create and cash a realistic-looking product. Today criminals do it in an instant on a $500 computer, with no witnesses to pick them out in a lineup, because theyre doing it from an armchair in China or Russia, a continent away. And checks are simply one piece of an identity thiefs arsenal.

In recent years identity theft has become the very monster I feared it would become. Its a crime so versatile that the list of potential targets is endless. Whos at risk? Anyone who has a credit card or a bank account, or who pays a bill. Anyone who has a mortgage, a car loan, or a debit card. Anyone who has a drivers license, a Social Security number, or a job. Anyone who has phone service or health insurance. Anyone who goes on the Internet.