On Identity Theft-BECKER

A few months ago I received an email on an official looking United States Treasury letterhead informing me that I was owed several hundred dollars by the federal government that would be sent if I would just provided some personal information. I had not heard of this scam but it seems unlikely that I would be notified in this way about a refund (and even more unlikely that I had a refund!). To make sure I checked with my accountant. He confirmed my opinion, although he had not heard of this scam either. Identity theft is one among unfortunately many negative effects of the electronic communication age of credit cards, phones, and the internet. A common claim, probably based on limited evidence, is that about 9 million Americans each year are victims of identity theft, and many additional victims are found in Great Britain, Canada, Japan, and other developed nations. $10,000 is said to be the average loss per victim in the United States. If these numbers are in the right ballpark, the annual amount defrauded in this country alone would be some $90 billion. The worldwide incidence and cost of identity theft is rising rapidly over time as credit cards and the internet spread throughout the world. Identity thieves prey on the fears and greed of people. Greed is the explanation for why many emails, often supposedly from Africa, promise millions of dollars to a trustworthy person if he can take care of huge sums for a while. All that is asked from victims is their information on their bank account numbers and a little other personal information. These promises are so absurd that one wonders why anyone would respond, but they are cheap to send, and can be profitable if only a minute fraction of recipients fall for it. Other approaches rely on fear rather than greed. Another real example is a telephone call from someone alleging to be a state or local government official. He threatens that the person called is subject to arrest because he did not report for jury duty. However, he reassures that arrest could be avoided if the victim would provide some personal information that could help clear up his record. It is difficult to sympathize with people who are "taken" because they are trying to get rich quickly in ways that usually involve participating in illegal activities. Still, effective deterrence of identity theft would be desirable since so many people are victims. As Posner indicates, the aggregate amount taken by identity theft, plus avoidance spending by potential victims, plus the spending of time and other resources by the identity thieves themselves, exceed the total cost of many other crimes. Posner notes that the economic theory of optimal deterrence implies as a first approximation that the expected cost of apprehension and punishment to the identity thief should be at least as large as his expected gain from stealing identities. However, this first approximation may not give a good approximation to the minimum punishment that would deter this crime because there is a very low probability that such identity thieves are apprehended and convicted. Probabilities are low partly because crimes over the internet are difficult to trace to their source as many criminals are located in small out of the way countries, or in other places that are not easily reached by enforcement officials. Suppose that the probability of solving a representative identity theft was no better than 1/1000, so that out of say 9 million such thefts each year, fewer than 9,000 are solved by finding the perpetrators. If the typical amount stolen is $10,000, making the expected punishment exceed the expected gain implies that a convicted identity thief would be subject to a penalty of $10 million. Since convicted thieves usually do not have so much wealth, punishments typically take the form of significant prison terms. If identity criminals are quite risk averse, a 1/1000 probability of a $10 million dollar punishment would be much more onerous than a $10,000 punishment with certainty. Hence the punishment required to deter could be much smaller than $10 million. On the other hand, if criminals like risk, and the evidence suggest that they often do, adequate deterrence would require an even greater punishment than $10 million, or its jail time equivalent. The expected punishment required to deter identity theft may also be much less than the loss to victims because in most cases the gain to the thieves is much less than the loss to their victims. The relatively small gain from gaining access to victim's personal information can be seen from how little is asked online for such information-less than $100 is typical. This is partly because victims and credit card companies spend valuable resources on cutting their risk of losses from such theft. The gain is relatively small also because potential victims suffer a psychic loss since they worry about the potential theft of their identities, and actual victims are hurt and angered about the invasion of their privacy. Net gains to thieves are further reduced below the losses to victims because identity thieves put time and other resources into criminal activities, resources that could have been spent on more socially productive activities.

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