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Mexico Lawmakers to Rule on ID Theft
 Yvonne Reyes Campos - The News
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March 09, 2010
| "It’s estimated that every four seconds, an identity is robbed in the world."
- Arturo Zamora Jiménez | |
Mexico City – Identify theft has become a common practice in Mexico, and encompasses document falsification, Internet purchases, telephone surveys and databases that businesses share, which occasionally end up in the hands of criminals.
Despite all of this, in Mexico identify theft has not been classified, but one deputy hopes that the law will be modified to include this crime.
Dep. Arturo Zamora Jiménez, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), proposed over the weekend a reform to Article 387 of the Federal Criminal Code to punish people who take advantage of information to steal identities.
In Mexico, there are no studies or investigations on the number of victims, but in the United States, for example, identity theft grew by 50 percent between 2003 and 2006, Zamora said.
“It’s estimated that every four seconds, an identity is robbed in the world. Victims take some 600 hours to escape this nightmare and several years to recover their good name and credit history,” Zamora Jiménez said.
Zamora is proposing to impose sanctions of up to 12 years in prison for those who engage in identity theft.
“Identity theft takes place when someone passes theself off as another person and uses personal, financial information to take out loans, credit cards or apply for contracts,” Zamora said.
Identity thieves, he added, can obtain personal data by: robbing wallets and purses, stealing bank statements from mailboxes and applying for credit cards using a different name.
Zamora said that identity theft is carried out through different means by people posing as bank employees, creditors or Internet sites that ask for personal data.
“In addition, (thieves) observe transactions that victims make at automatic teller machines and phone booths to find out their personal identification number or voter ID number,” said Zamora, who represents a district in Jalisco.
The Deputy called on consumers to be careful even when it comes to disposing of their trash, since it often contains telephone, bank or insurance statements, a source of information for “white-collar” criminals.
“The problem is so widespread that on Nov. 18, 2009, the Condusef (National Commission to Protect Financial Institution Customers) issued an alert about supposed credit card replacements that are associated with identity theft or even the complete withdrawal of the customer’s bank funds,” Zamora said.
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