Someone asked a wonderful question of me the other day: “why don’t the police arrest people who steal your identity?”. It is a question I’ve never been asked before (which is odd, now that I think about it), but I’ve spend much time researching and pondering.

It comes down to three factors:

1. Lack of Resources. When my identity was stolen the first time (a woman used it to buy a second home in my name), I reported it to the local police department. Their response was that I was number 6532 on this list of fraud complaints and that they would never get around to looking into the case. I knew the woman’s name, address and phone number, but law enforcement didn’t have the resources to investigate or prosecute the crime. And I didn’t have the resources to go after her legally. So it went untouched.
2. Lack of Evidence. The average identity thief knows how to mask their real “identity”, meaning that when the police go to investigate who committed the crime, all they find is another victim whose identity was stolen and used to cover the first crime. Identity thieves live under layers and layers of alternate identities. For example, Joe uses Bill’s identity to steal John’s. It gets so convoluted that it becomes difficult to track. That is why it is estimated that only 1 in 1000 identity thieves is ever arrested.