It was Sunday, Oct. 13, when state Senator Amanda Aguirre’s cell phone rang.
What she was told astounded her. The caller wanted to confirm her purchase of shoes. Then on Monday, she received another call asking whether she bought what appeared to be clothing.
In both transactions, made online, her credit card number was used. All in all, the goods were worth about $3,000 — more than her monthly salary of $2,000 as a state legislator. The goods were ordered from stores in North Carolina and California, and intended to be mailed to those states.
Aguirre, D-24, had become a victim of credit card fraud. The irony lies in the fact that the Yuma-based lawmaker is at the forefront of efforts to combat identity theft.
“I was totally surprised and frightened by it — that somebody has been making purchases [through] the Internet, using my Visa number, claiming that that’s me,” she said.
Fortunately, the companies called to confirm the transactions, she said, and she was able to cancel them except for one, worth about $600, that was still being cleared at press time.
Aguirre said she immediately contacted her bank and cancelled her credit card.
“I was like, this is amazing. Here I am, I told the bank person that answered my call. I am a state senator in Arizona and I have been trying to introduce a bill to freeze consumer reports,” she said. “Isn’t this ironic that I’m a victim of identity theft?”
Aguirre had no idea how anyone could have obtained her personal data. What she knew was that someone did — and the information stolen included her credit card number, her name, and apparently even her cell phone number.
She could only surmise that during the paperwork, whoever made the orders must have missed something or written down suspicious information, which led the companies to contact her, and for that she is extremely thankful.
According to the Attorney General’s Office, which has made combating identity theft a priority, thieves can obtain personal data simply by going through a person’s trash.
There are other ways to do it besides stealing one’s mail or purse. Thieves can get debit or credit card numbers through “skimming,” or using a device to capture information at an ATM or during an actual purchase; “phishing,” in which a thief sends an e-mail claiming to be from a bank or government agency asking for personal data; or diverting mail to another location by filling out a change of address form.
The AG said once data are obtained, thieves can drain bank accounts with electronic transfers, open credit card accounts and never pay them off, use the victim’s name during an arrest, or buy a car using the victim’s credit history to get a loan.
There are telltale signs of identity theft. The most obvious ones include charges on your credit card that you never made, and seeing in your credit report accounts you never opened.
Once an identity is stolen, the AG recommends immediately contacting the police, closing accounts, and placing a fraud alert on a credit file.
In Aguirre’s case, her money is likely to remain intact.
Aguirre said she will ask for a freeze of her consumer report, one of the recourses a victim could do so no new credit account would be opened by someone else using her information.
This means the senator will get first hand information how the process of freezing a consumer report works.
Last session, Aguirre introduced a bill that would have set up a mechanism to freeze a credit report through certified mail. The freeze would not have been lifted without the consumer’s permission.
While S1345 was widely supported in the Senate, it never made it to the House floor for a vote. That bill would have required a consumer-reporting agency to temporarily lift the freeze within three business days upon receiving a consumer’s request by mail or 15 minutes after the consumer’s request is received by phone, fax, or Internet during business hours. The courts and several government agencies would have been exempted from the freeze.
Aguirre said she is working to introduce a similar measure next year.
“I think the sticking point will be the fees,” she told Arizona Capitol Times. Instead of a “reasonable” fee to be charged to freeze or unfreeze a report, there would be a specific figure in the new bill, she said.
The figure, still the subject of negotiation, is likely to be between $5 and $12, she said.
The legislation is nearly ready, and Aguirre said she expects no opposition to it.
The first-term senator said she is set to meet with Rep. Rob Robson, R-20, and Rep. Marian McClure, R-30, to look over a draft of the legislation next month.
She said she also met with stakeholders during the National Conference of State Legislatures meeting in Boston this summer.
“Based on what is happening right now around the country, we feel very comfortable that our bill [would] be moving forward, that there would not be any opposition,” she said.
Robson, chair of the House Rules Committee, held the bill in his committee last session, concerned that in trying to combat to identity theft, the Legislature might be “overreaching” and in the process could be stifling people’s ability to gain access to their own reports. It might also place undue burden on commercial transactions, Robson said.
“You are able to deal with credit freezes currently,” he said in a previous interview. He raised another point: Stealing a credit card does not automatically amount to stealing an identity.
“Stealing one’s credit card is theft,” he had said. “Identity theft is when you live under a person’s identity, when you assume an identity and live under it.”
The retail industry was also apprehensive that the bill would affect its ability to provide fast, hassle-free service.
Arizona leads the nation in identity theft. A federal commission said the areas with the highest per capita rate of this type of crime in 2005 were Phoenix, Mesa and Scottsdale; cities in Nevada and California came next.
Some 9,000 complaints from residents were logged that year, according to reports. The Public Interest Research Group and the Consumers Union, which supported the Aguirre bill, believe that number is just the tip of the iceberg.
“Hopefully all the changes that we have done, he will be in agreement with,” Aguirre said of Robson. “I think we have done quite a few, and we are ready and Arizona is ready. The consumers of Arizona are ready to receive this protection.”