"To fight identity theft, law enforcement, business and consumers must work together," said ITAC Executive Director Anne Wallace. "The information that ITAC collects when helping victims of identity theft is helping law enforcement find and punish the perpetrators. Our law enforcement partners tell us that ITAC data gives investigators a 360 degree perspective on these crimes, increasing the likelihood of arrests and the speed at which arrests are made."
Since the ITAC victim assistance center opened two years ago, ITAC has signed data sharing agreements with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Federal Trade Commission through its Consumer Sentinel database, which is used by more than 1000 law enforcement agencies around the country.
"Over the past year, we've loaded information about 9,000 ITAC cases into our Financial Crime Database, which is used by postal inspectors all over the country," said Lee Heath, chief postal inspector for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. "ITAC data has helped us locate, and in some cases arrest, suspects in more than a dozen cases."
ITAC is expanding its law enforcement partnership to the state and regional level. ITAC recently signed a data sharing agreement with the Regional Identity Theft Network which is led by the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Patrick Meehan. The network includes federal agencies (U. S. Postal Inspection Service, FBI, Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security, State Department), as well as the Pennsylvania Attorney General and District Attorneys in Philadelphia County and surrounding counties. Data on all stolen or criminally used identity information will be accessible to all participants.
