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Where And When Does Identity Theft History Start?It appears that identity theft history first began with a book. That book was 'The Day of the Jackal' by Frederick Forsyth. A very good read, if you don't mind me saying so... In case you are not aware, the book centres on a hired assassin who has been paid to kill de Gaulle. As you might imagine, if you plan to shoot a national leader, you had better have a get away plan established. To enable our hit man to escape the scene, he establishes four fake identities to aid his travel into and out of France and purchase of the necessary equipment. One of the fake passports our hit man acquires is his 'escape document' and it is from the UK. He trawls a number of small town cemeteries looking for headstones of infants that have died and, had they lived, would be similar in age to him. Having found a name, date of birth and death and knowing the town of the deceased as well, he went to a national records office. At the records office he was able to cheaply purchase a copy birth certificate. Since in those days birth and death certificates were not matched together or cross referenced, he had the first part of his ID trail. From there, it was a matter of obtaining further genuine ID documents in his new name, renting an appartment, opening a bank account etc etc. As you can imagine, publishing this information for the first time really was the birth of identity theft in the public mind. That it appeared to be relatively easy to do, only helped it along. As I mentioned earlier, it appears that identity theft history started here in the 1970s. Though our hit man was not planning to defraud anyone, as is the common method, he was clearly intending to use his new UK passport to help him do wrong. And whilst it is true to argue that the 'victim' is deceased and so will not suffer, this is still identity theft history. Having seen an interview with the author on television, it seems that the 'scheme' had long been used by criminals. The idea has since been used in other high profile entertainment: for exampe, the book was remade into the Bruce Willis movie, The Jackal. An example of such a situation would be the following
identity theft case
Identity Theft Definition
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