Identity thieves hit locally based state firefighters

By: SARAH WILKINS - North County Times | Monday, June 18, 2007 11:39 PM PDT ∞

NORTH COUNTY -- Identity thieves have recently hit firefighters working for the California Department of Forestry, including about a dozen assigned to North County, and have used stolen credit card information to rack up charges on everything from online dating sites to donations toward international relief organizations, authorities said.

About 40 San Diego-area firefighters have fallen victim since the thefts were first reported in the fall of 2006, said Randy Scales, Chapter Director for the San Diego unit of the CDF firefighters' union.

North County firefighters have encountered individual losses ranging from $300 to about $3,000. Total thefts in the San Diego area have topped $30,000, Scales said.

The thefts have been reported to authorities at the fire agency's state level, San Diego sheriff's department and credit card bureaus, Scales said. However, probes into various sources of possible tampering, such as online information from the firefighter's union and the department's Web-based company store, have not revealed any violations, he said.

"We could not pin down one particular source ... we can't find a security breach that says, 'This is where it's coming from,'" he said.

"We thought it was possibly the company store on the union Web site, but some people that never made any purchases also had their credit cards hit."

The problem peaked in January and February and has since slowed, with one or two local firefighters reporting theft in the last month, Scales said.

It is also possible that the fire agency was not specifically targeted, and the victims were simply part of the ongoing, nationwide identity theft epidemic, he said.

However, 40 cases among the fire agency's 492 San Diego employees -- roughly 8 percent -- results in more than twice the national average of about 3 percent. According to the Federal Trade Commission, as many as 9 million Americans become victims of identity theft annually, compared to the nation's total population of about 300 million.

The local victims are among hundreds hit throughout the fire agency, which employs some 3,800 full-time personnel and operates 228 fire stations statewide, including those in Ramona, Valley Center, Rincon, Deer Springs and surrounding rural areas.

In Valley Center, fire Engineer Chris Carrera said someone used his credit card 30 times in a single night for transactions including donations to Christian and Islamic relief funds.

"When I saw my bank statements, I cancelled my card," Carrera said. "The bank sent a new card but didn't cancel the old account," allowing the thief to make off with more than $300, which has since been reimbursed.

Likewise, fire Capt. Richard Wierenga, of the Rainbow Conservation Camp in Fallbrook, lost more than $3,000 to thieves, but was notified by his bank the next morning of the suspicious activity.

Firefighter Robert Reynolds, also assigned to Valley Center, said he lost about $800 earlier this year to thieves who attempted to use his credit information on a $600 purchase from an online flower shop.

Reynolds' bank shut his account down for about a week to remedy the problem, allowing him to use only cash in that time.

"It was a huge inconvenience," Reynolds said. "I heard about it before, but didn't think it would happen to me. And all of a sudden, it happened."

-- Freelance writer Kim Oakley contributed to this report. Contact staff writer Sarah Wilkins at (760) 761-4414 or swilkins@nctimes.com.