A Fool for Identity Theft

Nominally honest people are forever doing seemingly innocent, very unwise things that expose them to the less scrupulous. One of my latest adventures in real-life stupidity came to my attention with a phone call a few months back from the staff of a heavy-equipment resale website. It appears that I was offering to sell a half-dozen front-end loaders and other stuff in the $30k range. News to me. But there it was, my name and address with someone else's phone number and email beneath pictures of tractors in sexy poses.

I'm as turned on by well-muscled machinery as the next fellow, particularly as I come from a family with multi-generational ties on both sides to farm and construction equipment maker J.I. Case Co. with headquarters in my hometown Racine, Wisconsin. But my email address is not of the form "david@gotopoland.com." Go to Poland? What is it about Eastern European hackers that moves them to concoct risible urls that make you blink and shake your head? Well, be thankful for something.

The would-be perpetrator of this construction equipment hoax faxed a very real looking California Resale Certificate to the website's office and so got his listings placed without difficulty. He faxed my resale certificate as a matter of fact. He was able to do so because I'd conveniently put a jpeg of the very document on my website. What was I thinking? Well, way back when I started my business I thought it would be convenient if vendors could see my resale certificate and insurance documents and know I was for real. I had all kinds of documents up for grabs, business licenses, professional licenses; just about everything except a scan of my signature, my social security number and my bank account numbers.

Sometimes God looks out for fools, which he seems to have done in my case. I assured the construction equipment people I did not have tractors, much less tractors for sale on their website. I quickly gutted my site of anything presumably useful to someone seeking to impersonate me. So far, that's the extent of the consequences. At least as far as I know.

I have been taken by people who were not what they advertised themselves to be several times in the last ten years. It does not leave a good feeling in one's breast or nurture faith in one's fellow man. I admit to my foolish victimhood because I'm mostly beyond embarrassment. I also need to remind myself quite frequently to be somewhat less trusting of strangers.

I wonderful fellow I worked for more than thirty years ago passed on a piece of curious advice. He said, "There is no shame in being taken by a professional." I can only assume he was speaking from bitter experience. A professional in any specialty, particularly a professional confidence man can out-bluff you within his specialty. The medical profession, bless all the good ones, shares this tendency to derive authority through bluffing. You must keep in mind that a century ago they were still bleeding sick people. "Scientific medicine" is still a concept in development. But I digress. No shame in being taken by a professional. Being taken by an amateur? I suppose that's another thing.

In spite of knowing absolutely for sure that a co-signer is "a fool with a pen," I co-signed on a car loan for a home health care worker who was helping Julie through an illness some years back.

The opportunity came as all successful fraudulent offers do: it was an answer to my prayers and a real bargain. A good person with a home health care certificate slightly down on her luck was willing to work in my house and take good care of my wife if only she had a car to make the trip. She actually did make payments for about 18 months so I was only hooked for a few thousand dollars (ouch) in the end. I fired her after a month when she turned out to be using crystal meth and also revealed herself to be a pathological liar. Well, I assume she was pathological because it lets me off the hook slightly for not seeing through her story sooner. She disappeared with most of my collection of spare keys to things and a few trinkets, so I had a few locks to roll and a little less memorabilia.

In my questionable defense, I'd had recent surgery and was running a pretty good serum level of Vicodin. Or maybe that episode was associated with another unwise decision. "Don't drive or operate heavy machinery while taking this medication." You should add "don't make any big decisions either." The hoary adage holds: if it's too good to be true it isn't. And in spite of how great you're feeling at the moment, keeping some things private is a really good idea. Repeat daily for maximum protection. And be extra cautious if you are about to break one of your own rules.