Online identity theft scams flourished during the COVID-19 pandemic, ensnaring 1 in 6 Americans and leading to $52 billion in losses last year alone, according to Javelin Strategy & Research.
As Zina Wilson sat in front of her computer in her suburban Ohio home last year, she decided: You have ripped off the wrong family.
“I will not let this go,” Wilson said. “It’s about my niece, but I hate when people do the wrong thing ... knowingly stealing and ruining peoples’ lives.” Cunningham wasn’t her real name – just one of the many aliases used by Scales, 29, who was leasing the $500,000 house in yet another person’s name, among the people whose identity police say Scales stole.
Local police often are ill-equipped to help with identity theft, and federal investigators typically take on only large-scale fraud. But investigators in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s financial crimes division got a head start when Wilson brought a mountain of evidence to their door last February.Fraud started as a trickle, then became a flood
“It’s been terrible,” she said, speaking to USA TODAY on condition of anonymity. She’s afraid of being scammed again, anxiously waiting for the next eviction notice to hit her credit report. Landlords and real estate companies eventually would file eviction paperwork – of course naming the person on the ID, the 26-year-old in Ohio, instead of Scales., a teacher also from Ohio.
Wilson had asked her niece to sign over power of attorney so she could visit rental offices and pull paperwork from landlords on the young woman's behalf. She assumed she could simply correct the errors so her niece could move on.
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