How to Advocate for Identity Theft Victims

Your wallet goes missing. You cancel everything, but the alerts just keep coming: New bank accounts and credit cards in your name. Big charges. Damage to your credit score. It can take months or years to untangle all this. You may never get paid back in full. And nobody seems to be able to help you. Not the police. Not your bank. Not the government. 

Our guest, Carrie Kerskie, CAN help. She' a PI and identity theft expert who helps people recover from these crimes. And she’s made it her mission to help consumers protect themselves and to educate other investigators about how to work with victims of identity crimes. Kerskie is also an instructor with PI Education. In this episode, she talks about her upcoming ID theft investigations course — which covers how identity theft works, how these cases play out, and why fostering this expertise can be a game-changer — in your clients’ lives and in your own business.

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Pursuit Magazine and PI Education are part of StoryboardEMP, a media and education company in Nashville, TN. Pursuit, a free online magazine for private investigators, explores all things investigative, from gumshoe techniques and surveillance tech to industry news and crime in media. PI Education, its sister brand, provides high-quality online continuing education for licensed PIs. Pursuit and PIed are owned and edited by husband-wife team Hal Humphreys, a PI, and Kim Green, a writer and radio producer.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Identity theft. It's a nightmare, and it can happen to anyone. Imagine this: your wallet goes missing at a bar one night, you cancel everything, but the alerts keep coming, new bank accounts, new credit cards in your name, email and social media accounts taken over, passwords changed, big charges, damages to your credit score. It could take months or years to untangle all of this. You may never get paid back in full, and nobody seems to be able to help you. Not the police, not your bank, not the government. But I'm here today with someone who can help you. Carrie Kersky is a private investigator, an expert in identity theft investigations. She's spent years helping people recover from identity theft, and she's made it her mission to help consumers protect themselves and to educate other investigators about how to do the work with victims of identity crimes. Um, lucky for us, Carrie is also an instructor with PI Education. Today we're talking about how identities how identity theft works, how these cases play out, and why educating the public and fellow PIs can be a game changer in your clients' lives and in your own business. Carrie, thank you so much for taking the time to be here with us today. I'm absolutely tickled to see your face again. It's been a long time since we've had a chat. Um for our listeners that don't know the name Carrie Kersky, tell us a little bit about your background and how did you get into this line of work?

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Yeah, well, thanks for having me on. It's great to see you as well. Uh, background, my private investigation agency has been in Naples, Florida since 2001. It was around 2006 where we had our call from a first identity theft victim. And at the time there weren't really many resources. I mean, the FTC was just starting with their website. So she's like, I'm desperate. I need help. I said, Well, we've never done that. She said, I don't care, help me figure it out. So that's kind of what started it. Then over the years, word of mouth spread, um, you know, was asked to do uh public speaking to warn others about identity theft, and it kind of took on a life of its own. And so for really for about the past 10 years, all we do is work with identity theft victims and work with um executives and and high net worth individuals and families for the prevention and restoration as well. Uh so it's it's definitely kept us busy, but that's kind of how we got started. Just first phone call.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

I love it. And and you know, I think it's safe to say you're one of one of the leading experts in this field. Um, I I think everybody that that that knows you kind of acknowledges that. Um, what are you seeing right now in terms of trends? What's what's changing in the world of identity theft?

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Well, as you can imagine, AI is having its impact on the world, everything, and also with scammers. It's making it much easier for them. They can mass produce, they can uh implement changes much faster, just like businesses are using AI to adapt and grow, so are the the criminal organizations. Um, I I gave a presentation once at a PI conference where I was talking about you know how to use chat how to use Chat GTP, and that's just one example. And I put in, I said, write me a phishing email. And within seconds, it had a beautifully written out email about this is your bank. We had a suspicious transaction, but of course, at the very bottom it says this is for demonstration purposes only. Well, the criminals just take that out.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

So just delete that sentence.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Exactly. So that's one of the big trends is that no longer do they have to, you know, be creative and you don't have the typos, you don't have the you know, the grammatical errors. The other thing we're seeing is with the deepfakes, um, when they call, even though they might have an accent, when you hear the voice on the phone, there is no accent. So that's another way that they are using those filters to uh to convince people. Um, you know, caller ID spoofing, they've been doing that for years, they're still doing it. Uh, they're just upping their game. So as technology advances, so too do their techniques. And that's what makes it hard for everyone today is because it changes so fast that as soon as you learn something, it's like, oh, well, that's obsolete, and now I have to pay attention to this. So it's constantly changing. So a lot of the same old tried and true scams are still out there, still convincing people. It's just they're being done in a different way. And because of all the data breaches, you can buy, and when I say you, I don't mean just private investigators. I mean anyone can go online and buy a name, address, date of birth, and social for about 10 cents. Yeah. And that's not on the dark web.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

Yeah. And I've I've look, I've been getting texts about my unpaid um toll fines for the past couple of months. And it's everybody's pretty well aware that's that's due to a data breach somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Exactly. Well, that one is it makes the roads. It seems like you'll be inundated for about a week or two with it, then it dies off, and then a couple months later and you get it again. Um, but but the criminals are relying on is circumstance or can um coincidence. And oftentimes people will call me, they're like, Well, you know, I think it's a scam, but I was traveling on the highway, and you know, I don't know maybe if they had one of these things on there. Maybe I did do something. So that's what they're hoping on. You know, if you're if you're at home and you're not driving anywhere, it's obvious.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

The first time I got one of those texts, I had just gotten back. Like, I'd been to Texas two months earlier and had a rental car, drove on some toll roads, and I mean, I know that my contract with Hertz, they will send me an additional invoice and pay the thing. But I got the text, I'm like, huh. And even like I'm in the business, right? I'm a private investigator. I know better. I even I look at the text, I'm like, oh, wait a minute. And then it hit me. Um no toll company is going to send you a text message asking you to click a link to pay your bill.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

Exactly. They are government agencies, they work by snail mail. So that's one of one of the telltale sides. But you know, when it comes to identity theft, anyone can be a target. It doesn't have to be from anything that you have done yourself. It's just your name is next on the list. So, you know, I'm and that's why with the people that we work with, we don't tell them that we can protect them from identity theft because you can't. It's impossible. So, what we say to clients is we make their identity difficult to use. So the criminals move on to an easier target. And that's about the best we can do.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

Yeah. Yeah. What surprises people most when you walk them through how identity theft works?

SPEAKER_00 6:48

The fact that their identity is available for sale right now online for about 10 cents, that is the big one. Um, and they have been led down, led to believe from all the media and everything that you read, the articles, publications, and everything else. And these are all well-meaning journalists. It's just they don't understand the industry. Um, but they have all been led to believe if I sign up for credit monitoring or an identity theft protection service, I don't have to worry about anything. Because when they call us, they have those services and they're like, I've been paying for this for years. How did this happen? I'm like, there's no prevention with those at all. All they are is now there's a problem, and they may or may not fix it. So those are some of the biggest things that once we really tell people about all the different types of identity theft and how, you know, credit monitoring is only maybe 20% of what's out there. And there are more than 50 consumer reporting agencies, not just Equifax, Transunion, and of Experian. So, you know, by the time we're all done with the phone call, I think their heads are kind of blown and they're like, oh my God, I had no idea.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

Yeah, it's crazy. You've been you've been helping people recover from identity theft for for years now. Is there one case or moment that kind of stuck with you?

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Oh, there are so many of them. Um, two really were were the big ones. One to show kind of the role that we play and how we help clients, and the other one to show the complexity. So the first one is we were contacted by a woman where um she was renewing her American Express, or she should have gotten the new one in the mail. Well, instead of getting the card, she got a letter saying, We're not renewing your card because you're deceased. She's like, Well, last I checked, I have a pulse. So she tried calling them. Yeah, exactly. Um, called them, wasn't getting anywhere. You know, she tried months with this. Finally, her um uh wealth management advisor said, call Carrie and her team. And so she gave us a call. We talked to them. I kind of knew what happened because we'd seen it before. But in her case, what happened is her husband had passed away three years prior. So when the mortgage company reported the death, they did it under her social, not his. But what she didn't realize is all three bureaus, credit bureaus, had her labeled as deceased. She was weeks away from having all of her assets, her bank accounts, everything frozen because they thought it was well, we used to call it ghosting, but that has a new meaning today. But um, everything changes. But um, you know, she she was minutes away from not being able to access anything.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

So with when we first contacted the credit bureaus, they did like they do with the victims. These companies know victims don't know what their rights are, so they tried to play the games with us. And I'm like, wait a minute here. Here's what the federal law says. I'd be happy to email you a copy of the citation in case you forgot what it says. And they're like, please hold and came back on like a minute or two later, and like, problem resolved, she's alive, you know, we figured it out what it was, and you know, so that just shows it. It really was like a five-minute phone call. Yeah, is all it took because we knew what the laws are. Another one that shows the complexity of it. We were contacted by a victim where he got a uh two things in the mail. One was for um a car loan and one was for insurance on a new car. Problem was he was out of the country, he did not buy a new car. And this was, of course, after 2020, because everything now is being you can do remotely. So you don't so whomever this person was, they bought a car from a dealership in another state and had it delivered all without setting foot in the dealership. It was all done via online communications. Wow. And so we went ahead and we mitigated the um the car loan and the insurance, got those taken care of. Um, and then all of a sudden, after that was done, my clients started getting letters in the mail from toll violations, red light violations, all these traffic citations. So whoever had this car and was driving it was a really bad driver or just didn't care. So then, and this was in multiple states, so we had to contact each one of those. And many, many of these agencies had never dealt with this type of identity theft before. So they were trying to figure out procedures as we were going through this process. So then after a year of all this, we finally got everything resolved because a lot of it was, you know, court cases and and whatnot. A year later, my client gets a collection letter and it was for a second auto insurance policy. So, what the person had done is after we canceled the first insurance policy, obviously they tried to register the car, they couldn't because there was no insurance, they signed up for another company. Well, the bill was never paid, and after 12 months' worth, they tried to come after my client. So a year later. So that just shows how identity theft, it's more than just financial. I mean, if he would not have been aware of this, his license could have been suspended or revoked.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

So that you know, those are just two brief examples of ones that really stood out.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

I love it. Um, it's the gift that keeps on giving.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Absolutely. It's like it's literally as an onion. When we work with a victim, they come to us with one problem. By the time we've done the initial um intake session, we usually find three or four more.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now you're teaching a live course over at PI Education this August. What are folks going to walk away with if they attend this class?

SPEAKER_00 12:10

So a couple of big things is one is private investigator believe private investigators think that working with identity theft victims is finding the bad guy, finding the person who did it. That is irrelevant when it comes to restoration. There are laws out there protecting victims, and you don't have to have the identity of the perpetrator. So it's not like your typical, you know, and a lot of PIs come from law enforcement background, and you have to, you know, get the evidence and prove who did it, go through the whole court proceedings, all, you know, all the good stuff. Identity theft, that it doesn't happen that way. All the victims that we work with, we don't ever have to identify who did it. We just have to document that the victim is a victim of identity theft. And usually it's police report or an I um Federal Trade Commission affidavit, you know, one of those type of things. And then we work with the companies to mitigate it. But there are laws in place that protect victims. So, really, when you're working with identity theft victims, you're not finding the bad guy. You're being an advocate for the victim. And we as investigators have this skill set already in place. We know how to, you know, talk on the phone. We know how to document phone calls, we know um, you know, how to ask the right questions to get to the right answer or to get to the right person. These are things we do on a daily basis that you can just apply to helping victims recover. And the biggest thing is there's no shortage of victims. When the economy gets worse, victims increase. Um, 2020, I mean, it was just the first quarter of 2021, we were turning away victims because we were at capacity. We couldn't help anymore because of the PPP, EIDL, all those other ones. So, really, we're gonna show you the right way to work with identity theft victims, why you should work with them, because basically by the time they contact us, they're like, take my money, please, and just make this go away. Help, maybe it's recession proof.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me ask you this what are some real world ways private investigators or other professionals can help victims of identity theft?

SPEAKER_00 14:14

So a couple different things. Um, there are really two big, two big ways they can help. One is obviously the restoration, helping them recover, restore their identity so that they can move on with their lives. The other one is prevention, working with people to help them put in place the measures to make their identity difficult to use. For example, a credit freeze. The simplest and easy thing that can be done, it's free, it's mandated by federal law, but the credit bureaus are making it difficult to do. They hide it, they bury it on their site. Anyone can set up a free online account, but depending on where you go on their website, you could have the paid monitoring, the free one, you could do a credit lock as opposed to a credit freeze. So a lot of times when people come to us, they're like, Oh, yeah, I had an incident five years ago, you know, I locked everything down, I'm good. They had a fraud alert that expired after one year.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

So really helping people with prevention for a while. What we were because people would, you know, contact us. I would tell everybody, here's what you need to do, go freeze your credit. And then they call me going, I don't know how to do this. So we would just charge a flat rate, go to people's homes, get everything put in place for them, leave behind all the documentation with them. We kept nothing with us, and that way they could maintain going forward. So that in itself is another line of service that you could offer.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

Yeah, the credit freeze is a really good option. Um, and for our listeners, if you're not a private investigator, um, you know, a credit freeze is never a bad idea. Um, if you if you find yourself in a situation where you're like, I need to buy a home or whatever, you can unfreeze it for a period of time and go through that process. But having a freeze, that's stop, that's a preventative measure that stops a lot of the problems right up front.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Right. So what a credit freeze does, and again, it's mandated by federal law, says that the bureaus are not allowed to release your credit report for any new credit applications or an increase in a credit limit. So it has no impact on your any of your current credit accounts at all. It's just for anything new. Now, what we tell people is that it doesn't prevent the bad guys from filling out credit applications, but it prevents the applications from being approved and the accounts getting opened. So by putting that like the member the um victim I just talked about with the car loan? If he would have had a credit credit freeze in place, none of that would have ever happened.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Carrie, I I went, Kim was out of town several years ago. Her car had died. I went to the Ford dealership. I was gonna pay cash for the car, but I I got to thinking about it, I was like, you know, I we could do a little bit of a loan here. And so I I worked with the dealership to do a loan, and um, it was through Ford Motor Credit, and the guy came back and he goes, I don't know what's going on. Like, you're you're you're not in the system. I'm like, oh, I've got a freeze on everything.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

Like, oh yeah, that thing.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

I guess I'll just pay cash for this thing after all. Um, let me ask you this is this a good specialty for investigators to get into it?

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Absolutely, because like I said earlier, there's an endless supply of clients. Um, identity that happens every day can happen to anyone at any point in time. Um, so you know, I don't care who you are or how well you think you're protected, when your name is next on their list, they're gonna use it.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

That's it. That's it. Um, Carrie, you um you've recently taken on a leadership role over at the Florida Association of Private Investigators. Congratulations, number one. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

Yeah, so I'm excited. So I've been a long time member of FAPI, um, again, Florida Association of Private Investigators. I've been a member since I think 2007, um, and had many different roles, you know, on the board and and you know, helping with conferences and such over the years. So I'm I'm very excited and was very honored uh to be elected as the new president. Um, but yeah, it's it's a great association. Anyone who's a Florida investigator definitely got to do it. But we also have members that are not in Florida. And that's because when you join an association, the best things you get out of it is networking opportunities, because you're gonna find people where maybe you need a case and it goes to another state or another city or another specialty. Um, you also will get education because you these, you know, things are always changing. You need to keep up to date with what's going on out there. And then finally, your state legislative issues. Um, because easily they could change something that would make your life very difficult. So those are really the the three biggest reasons for joining state associations. So if you're not in one in your state, look it up and join it.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

Yeah, no doubt. Um, and what do you say to private investigators who say, Oh, I don't need to be a member of an association?

SPEAKER_00 18:55

You're missing out. You are missing out. Um, you know, in for a while I didn't join them. I'd go to the conferences and thought that was enough. But once you join, it elevates your professionalism. Um, and when you go to conferences and you're going to the networking events for the state associations, you get to meet fellow investigators face to face. And once you do that, that helps you put a face to that name. Um, you can develop a rapport and a trust with them because you're trusting them to help with your cases and your clients. Um, so really getting to know people, it's it's absolutely amazing. I mean, we've had some clients where, you know, again, it's an identity theft client we're working with, but they had another issue and they were, you know, traveling overseas and they had an issue. We reached out to one of the associations we're a member of, found a member who resided there, and they took care of the problem and we looked like heroes. And it was just because we were part of an association.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

Yeah, and my my my rule of thumb is always I don't have to be the guy, I just have to be the guy that knows a guy or a girl somewhere that can help the person. I can't do everything, I'm not an expert in many things. I'm I'm considered an expert in leak literally two specific things, but that that being able to have that Rolodex, that list of contacts, and you can say, Oh, I can't help you, but Carrie can. That that's where the association thing comes in really handy. Um Carrie, let me ask you this somebody's out there listening to the show, they're on the fence about whether or not they want to sign up for this course in August. What do you say to them right now?

SPEAKER_00 20:30

How confident are they that their business is going to be around if the economy goes south? Um, we were all part of 2008, 2009 when all that happened. And, you know, we we saw it as well. And that was kind of when we really started doing the shift to working exclusively with identity theft victims because we did all types of investigations. The insurance companies that we did work for, they were stopping doing investigations. Law firms that we did cases for, they were cutting back, they were cutting their staff. So everyone was being affected. The thing that kept us afloat through that whole time, identity theft cases.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

And you're not having to learn a whole new thing. It's not like learning OSINT, where that's that's a whole, you know, it's it's fabulous to know, but there is a steep learning curve, you know, once you really decide to specialize in that. This is using skills that you already have. Yeah. Um, you know, and depending on how you structure it, with us over the years of doing it, we have it structured now where our clients pay us an annual fee to do all this for them. Basically, they have us on retainer. So we have recurring revenue as a private investigating agency. How often does that happen?

SPEAKER_01 21:40

Yeah, yeah. That's that's it. Look, we work in a business that is sometimes we're crazy busy, sometimes we have no work coming in the door at all. I know during COVID, all of my court cases came to a screeching halt. I had six months where I mean, I had a couple of attorney friends who were like, hey, come out and do some work on this case, but it was like, make work, um, and I didn't feel good about that. Um this kind of work that is evergreen, that is always going to be there for you to be able to do the work, help your clients in a meaningful way. Um, there's nothing at all wrong with that. Carrie, let me ask you this. If people are watching this, considering coming to the class in August, where can they find more of your work and where can they connect with you?

SPEAKER_00 22:28

Sure. The easiest way is go to my website, which is carrykerskey.com.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

Very good.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

They can also find we have a YouTube channel, um, and I'm available on social media at Carrie Kerskey.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

I love it. Carrie, thank you again so much for taking the time to be here today. Always good to talk to you. Um, anything else? Any final words you want to share with our guests?

SPEAKER_00 22:47

No, just an honor, and I'm glad to see your face again. It's been quite a while.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

It's been a long time.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

Glad to keep in touch. And and again, if you're an investigator and you haven't considered identity theft testing investigations, I would highly suggest you at least consider it.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Yeah, absolutely. And for our listeners, that is the sound of pursuit this week. Thank you for tuning in.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

You've been listening to The Sound of Pursuit, a podcast by Pursuit Magazine and PI Education.