In what’s being widely seen as a very troubling pattern, law enforcement across the country are reporting that street gangs are making a notable shift off the street and into something even more shifty – identity theft.

Police in Florida recently raised the alarm about a move by local gang members from traditional gang activities, like drug dealing, into more sophisticated and lucrative crimes like identity theft. In Lee County, Florida – which in total has a smaller population than a mid-sized city – law enforcement has identified at least 1,300 gang members.

And gangs are getting smarter as they grow, adopting good business practices as they enter this new field:

• They’re using social media heavily, especially Facebook, to recruit more members and threaten rivals.
•  Gangs are also using Facebook to target kids as young as 10 years old to get involved in gang activities as early as possible.
• Gang members are using their girlfriends to apply for jobs at hospitals, medical offices, and retailers so they are in a position to steal customer and employee information.
• Gang members are being much more discrete, doing everything possible to hide their activities from authorities, even abandoning gang colors and tattoos so they don’t attract the attention of law enforcement.

Gangs are in a great position to turn identity theft into a multi-million dollar business. There are millions of gang members in the U.S. – more than 1 million according to the FBI, and spread over more than 33,000 different gangs. This provides an army of dedicated criminals who are more than willing to engage in all the sub-crimes that make up identity theft — mail theft, document forgery, skimming, credit and mortgage fraud, data theft, “cashing out”, and so on.

As more of these gangs realize the enormous profits with much lower risks to be made from identity theft and other frauds,  it’s only a matter of time before they switch their tactics and focus, puting all their might and power into stealing identities instead of turf. And with law enforcement cutbacks hitting nearly every state and city in the nation, there’s little to stop them.

http://www.news-press.com/article/20120117/CRIME/301170021/Southwest-Florida-gangs-eschew-street-Internet?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Home

Related posts:

1. IN THE HEADLINES: Street Gangs Use Identity Theft to Build Criminal Empires
2. IN THE HEADLINES: Growth of Small Identity Theft Ring Poses National Problem
3. IN THE HEADLINES: A Flash Mob of Identity Theft
4. IN THE HEADLINES: The Perfect Storm of Identity Theft
5. IN THE HEADLINES: Insider Identity Theft Continues to Plague Victims