Indiana Bill Aims to Help Identity Theft Victims

Indiana Statehouse

The state of Indiana is taking some aggressive measures to crack down on identity theft as well as provide assistance to citizens who have had their identity’s compromised. The bill (House bill 1121) is anticipated to be signed by Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, and has been called “common-sense” legislation by Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller.

The bill would empower the state’s attorney general’s office to do the following:

♦Formally establish an Identity Theft Unit within Zoeller’s office that will investigate identity theft complaints and assist its victims.

♦Create recovery tools for victims, such as ways to establish new credit. In addition, with the assistance of Zoeller’s office, victims could go to any court in the state and ask a judge to essentially clear their financial record.

♦Call for businesses to strengthen security measures, and it imposes fines for failing to do so.

♦Order creditors to tighten verification procedures placed upon credit applicants now.

♦Make synthetic identity deception a Class D felony that is punishable by up to three years.

♦Make a relatively new identity theft technique – in which parents use a child’s identity -a Class C felony. Class C felonies hold potential prison time of 2-8 years.

Within the past 18 months, Zoeller’s office received more that 500 identity theft reports – which certainly sparked the creation of this legislation. Speaking of state-wide legislation, often wondered what each state is doing in terms of ID theft laws? Well, search no more. We found this online database that links to language/information regarding what states are doing to fight identity theft. While this is a great resource, the one big takeaway is that NOT EVERY state has laws in place to protect identity theft victims. Hard to believe.