The Identity Theft Assistance Center has recently shown that identity thieves have begun focusing on individuals with good credit so that they can go after substantial home equity lines of credit. The FBI released their annual mortgage fraud report in April of this year and it unveils home equity credit fraud as an “emerging scheme” in the declining real estate and mortgage market.

These lines of credit are ideal targets for thieves because they are sizeable amounts of money. If the home owner does not often check their balance, it can be quickly stolen. At one point, identity thieves preyed upon those with poor credit, because such persons still had a chance at getting a mortgage from a subprime lender with very little documentation. Now, these lenders have gotten strict with the criteria, causing identity thieves to look elsewhere. These lines of credit can be very easy to open, some as simple as opening a credit card account. All the thief would need is some personal information and they will apply (pretending they are the homeowner) online. They will then request a funds transfer to their own account by sending a fax to the bank. The bank calls the thief to “verify” the account, not realizing they are not the actual homeowner.

It seems that data is showing New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to be the leaders in this type of fraud. Of course, anyone is vulnerable. Homeowners are advised to enroll in an identity theft fraud protection service to be alerted of any changes to their identity.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 10:01 am and is filed under Home Equity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.