If your ‘identity’ is stolen, beware!

In our obsession with war – both the "war" waged on us by rebels and the countdown to an American-Brit led coalition’s coming assault on Baghdad – we’ve overlooked a more personal battle, that of protecting ourselves.

The President was right to recently call the attention of our policemen to "street crime". She warned our cops to be more visible – as she put it, if I remember correctly: "I want to see more policemen on the street than in the newspapers."

Unfortunately, as we’ve pointed out often enough, we have lazy policemen. The police brass keep on harping about not having enough cops to cope with our burgeoning population, and that’s true enough. The trouble is that this lack of uniformed personnel (and I underscore "uniformed", not those cops who slink around looking like thugs, with their weapons deliberately bulging under their civilian garb) is compounded by the fact that you never see them when you need them.

Policemen must be seen, even when they’re not needed. That’s the drill. A visible police presence on the block is a deterrent to crime. It’s when the cops are missing from the scene that the rats come out to play. But everybody already knows that, even the cops who’re goofing off.

Of course, it’s a hardship for a policeman to stand in the hot sun, particularly during these El Niño days which are beginning to turn high noon and early afternoons into a furnace – I particularly commiserate with traffic cops who must stand in mid-street to try to untangle undisciplined traffic. (However, I find too few of them.) In the heat, the dust and the pollution, it’s No Man’s Land sometimes out there with the traffic cop and beat policeman inhaling fumes perhaps as noxious as Saddam Insane’s poison gases of mass destruction. On the other hand, every rookie already knew what he or she faced when enlisting for the job. If they couldn’t take the heat, walk the walk, and talk the talk (as they say in the Special Forces or the SAS), they should have chosen another profession.

So, our citizenry would be more comforted to spot more cops – back on the beat.

* * *

There’s more to fighting crime than protecting homes from akyat bahay gangs, robbers, and killers, or curbing the ubiquitous cellphone snatchers, or thwarting robbers who board buses, passenger jeepneys, and FX taxicabs. There’s electronic crime and postal crime which amount to the theft of hundreds of millions of pesos – and dollars.

Some of our post offices have been "home" to clever syndicates for years, where in-house rascals purloin bank and credit card information – then go on a rampage of looting.

A friend of mine recently got not only one of his foreign credit cards intercepted in the Makati Post Office, but his overseas bank account as well. The credit card scam was detected when one of the cheeky robbers rang up the credit card manager abroad, posing as the victim, to request that the victim’s credit level be increased – obviously so they could steal more from him!

Worse, the syndicate got hold – through the mail as well – of the fellow’s bank account "code" number abroad, and started pillaging his bank account. In a period of just a week and a half, they got more than $22,000 transferred to another bank account in another country (which they quickly emptied). This was done through a series of "emergency" withdrawals made every other day. You might ask: How was the foreign bank so dumb as to have permitted such a thing? Don’t forget: Big banks handle billions of dollars, euros, and other currencies daily. They don’t look too closely at every transaction. Not being a genius, like the scamsters, I can’t explain in detail how they did it – but they managed it quite efficiently.

Incidentally, this syndicate must have been in "action" for quite some time because another friend, a German businessman, recounted how his bank account in his hometown of Freibourg (in Germany’s Black Forest region, where presumably the cake originated) had been "raided" two years ago. Since his correspondence and confidential documents come through a P.O. Box in the Makati Post Office, my German friend also suspected that post office of being the source of his misfortune.

What did the "robbers" do with his money? They had a large amount transferred to a bank account in a border town of Thailand! Sanamagan. This syndicate, quite clearly, has an international reach.

Another German, this time the manager of a large Munich firm with a local office, had his Zurich bank account accessed in the same manner – losing scores of thousands of Swiss francs, which were also transferred to a bank account in another country. This occurred three years ago. Well, what a coincidence! The only common denominator of the "mishaps" which bedevilled the lives of these three persons – two Germans and one Filipino – was the Makati Post Office.

Does lightning only strike thrice? Betya when this appears, I may receive quite a few corroborating e-mails and letters. Yes, Virginia, somehow your mail can be intercepted, then your safe depositories or credit cards can be rummaged through electronically.

The advent of e-banking has made the depredations of these clever syndicates even easier.

May I suggest that former Armed Forces Chief of Staff, General Diomedes Villanueva, who’s the new Postmaster General, look into the Makati Post Office and find out whether it was merely a "coincidence" – or is something rotten, even if it’s not in Denmark?

* * *

Incidentally, the first-mentioned victim, a gentleman who’s lived and worked in major capitals abroad, had his foreign bank account accessed because the scamsters had stolen his identity.

My advice to our readers is to be very careful about the personal information they give out (or fill out), because once this is in the "net" it can be accessed by anybody with a knowledge of how the system works, particularly expert hackers.

My friend ruefully says that all an identity-thief has to know, "aside from your full name, address, and other particulars, is your mother’s maiden name!"

Why your mother’s maiden name? Because, my friend explained, that’s the question a bank executive or inspector usually asks when somebody tries to identify himself (or herself) as the true owner of a bank account.

Even if your mama is deceased, it seems, that’s how the set-up works. You’d be amazed at the ingenious ways in which thieves, embezzlers, swindlers and other scam-artists get "the goods" on you. The old days in which pistoleros and shotgun-toting bank robbers smash into a bank, or waylay armored vans (although these still occur) are almost over. They can rob banks with computers and other electronic gadgetry more smoothly – and, for a period, completely undetected.

* * *

Why did I remember to write this column, which has been percolating in my head for a while now? Because my attention was drawn to the traumatic ordeal of Mr. Derek Bond (no relation to James Bond), a 72-year-old British pensioner, a retired civil engineer from Bristol who was arrested in South Africa, soon after he arrived there (would you believe?) on a wine-tasting holiday, accompanied by his wife Audrey.

The couple were getting ready for supper when police cars screeched to a halt outside the place they were staying. To his astonishment, the local police grabbed Bond and told him he was under arrest and would be extradited to the United States! "I was dumbstruck," he later recounted.

"I arrived in Durban at midnight and was placed in custody in a concrete cell with just a small sleeping mat and a rather tatty blanket," he told reporters afterwards about his nightmare. "The next day the real horror started. I was put into large cells with murderers, rapists and drug addicts. I was held in a cage, that is all I can describe it as. My spirits started to sink and sink and at one stage I thought, am I going to survive?"

What had transpired was that Derek Bond had been mistaken for one of the "most wanted men" on the arrest list of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, namely Derek Lloyd Sykes, wanted for $4 million (Pounds 2.5 million) fraud. Sykes had been originally indicted in Houston, Texas, in December 1999 under the name of "Derek Bond" on 22 charges. What called the attention of the South African police to the innocent Derek Bond was that his passport carried the same serial number as the fake Bond’s. It was evident that at some stage, Derek Lloyd Sykes (also 72), a former Bricklayer from Yorkshire who had moved to Canada 40 years ago, had "stolen" the victim’s identity.

Indeed, the real Bond might have rotted away in jail had his case not gotten publicity in the media. The FBI back in the US received an anonymous tip-off (from a male voice with an English accent) that the real culprit was in Las Vegas.

On his release, the tearful and exhausted Bond was incensed that it had taken more than 12 hours after the arrest of Sykes – who was using another alias, Robert Graves – for the FBI to get the formalities completed for the release of the Bond who had been erroneously nabbed.

Owing to the awful mistake, Derek Bond had spent three weeks in miserable detention. He was so distraught, he recalled, he could not eat a bite for three days. His police cell had a stainless steel lavatory (which "thankfully flushed"), a foam mattress on the floor and a stool so low he said he had cramps after using it.

The President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki (upon hearing of the mistake) telephoned Bond in the police detention facility where he was held to apologize for what had happened. Mbeki urged Bond to return to South Africa to have tea with him. Bond recounted to reporters when he got back to Heathrow airport what he had said in reply: "I asked if I could have that in writing." And Mbeki had said, "Of course."

Bond probably won’t be in a hurry to return to the scene of his ordeal, but, as he remarked, the South African president’s letter will be, at least, a little trophy."

Bond just wanted to "go home", he declared. "It is an enormous relief to be freed. I have three super children and my grandchildren!"

You can imagine how the family suffered throughout that disgraceful episode.

Do such things happen in the Philippines? In spades. You better believe it.

* * *

Bond is considering suing the FBI over that boondoggle. Surely, he must.

The Feds not merely stole three weeks of his life, caused him untold anguish and pain (his wife and family were grievously afflicted, too), and shamed him when he was completely innocent.

The affair has dented, once again, the FBI reputation. The G-men of J. Edgar Hoover have been involved in so many snafus, and in house betrayals, including accusations of miscommunication before the 9/11 attacks, that they’ve a long way to go to refurbish their tarnished image.

What’s even more surprising is that it took ten days from Bond’s arrest by South African policemen, acting at the FBI’s behest, for the US Embassy in Praetoria to send an agent to take a sworn statement from him. All the while, Bond had been stoutly protesting his innocence.

Poor Bond.

One of the most worrisome crimes noted in the US, it was announced on CNN and Fox News a few months ago, I remember, was that of "stolen identity." The wire services reported that several people were in prison in the US because criminals had stolen their identities, including their Social Security numbers, and utilized these identities in the commission of their crimes.

So, beware. You may wake up someday to discover that somebody else has been posing as you.