On the Sound of Pursuit Podcast: We talk to private investigator and identity theft expert Carrie Kerskie about how private investigators can help victims restore their identities and credit and move on with their lives.
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 Carrie Kerskie is someone who can help.
Kerskie is a private investigator and 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. She also educates other investigators about how to work with victims of identity crimes.
You can watch that episode below. Or scroll down for an edited transcript of our conversation.
TRANSCRIPT
(Edited for length and clarity)
How Scammers Are Using AI
HAL HUMPHREYS: I think it’s safe to say you’re one of one of the leading experts in this field. What trends are you seeing? What’s changing in the world of identity theft?
CARRIE KERSKIE: AI is making things much easier for scammers. Criminal organizations are using AI to adapt and grow. I gave a presentation at a PI conference on Chat GPT, and I said, “Write me a phishing email.” And within seconds, it had a beautifully written email: “This is your bank. We had a suspicious transaction.” At the bottom it says, “This is for demonstration purposes only.” Well, the criminals just delete that.
So that’s one of the big trends: No longer do they have to be creative, and you don’t have the typos, the grammatical errors. The other thing we’re seeing is deepfakes. When they call, even though they might have an accent, when you hear the voice on the phone, there is no accent.
So as technology advances, so do their techniques. And because of all the data breaches, anyone can go online and buy a name, address, date of birth, and social for about 10 cents. And that’s not on the dark web.
AI is making things much easier for scammers. Criminal organizations are using AI to adapt and grow.
HUMPHREYS: I’ve been getting texts about unpaid toll fines for the past couple of months. The first time I got one of those texts, I’d just been to Texas and had a rental car, drove on some toll roads. I know that Hertz will send me an additional invoice. But I’m like, “Wait a minute.” And I’m a private investigator. I know better! No toll company is going to send you a text message asking you to click a link to pay your bill.
KERSKIE: Exactly. They are government agencies, they work by snail mail. So that’s one of the telltale signs. But when it comes to identity theft, anyone can be a target. It doesn’t have to be from anything that you have done. It’s just, your name is next on the list.
That’s why we don’t tell people 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.
How Identity Theft Cases Play Out
HUMPHREYS: What surprises people most when you walk them through how identity theft works?
KERSKIE: The fact that their identity is available for sale right now online for about 10 cents, They have been led to believe if they sign up for credit monitoring or an identity theft protection service, they don’t have to worry. But there’s no prevention with those at all.
We tell people about all the different types of identity theft and how credit monitoring is only maybe 20% of what’s out there. There are more than 50 consumer reporting agencies, not just Equifax, TransUnion, and of Experian. I think their heads are kind of blown. They’re like, “I had no idea.”
HUMPHREYS: You’ve been helping people recover from identity theft for years now. Is there one case that stuck with you?
KERSKIE: Two big ones. The first one is, we were contacted by a woman, she should have gotten her new AmEx in the mail. But 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. Wasn’t getting anywhere. She tried for months. Finally, her wealth management advisor said, “Call Carrie and her team.”
I kind of knew what happened because we’d seen it before. But in her case, 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 credit bureaus had her labeled as deceased. She was weeks away from having all of her assets, her bank accounts, everything frozen and not being able to access anything.
These companies know victims don’t know what their rights are, so they tried to play games with us. And I’m like, “Here’s the federal law. 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.” A minute or two later, problem resolved: She’s alive. We figured it out. A five-minute phone call is all it took, because we knew what the laws are.
We don’t tell people 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.
Another one: We were contacted by a victim. He got two things in the mail. One was for 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 car.
We mitigated the car loan and the insurance, got those taken care of. And then my client started getting letters in the mail from toll violations, red light violations, traffic citations in multiple states. So we had to contact each one of those agencies, many of which had never dealt with this type of identity theft before. They had no procedures for it. After a year of all this, we finally got everything resolved. Then, a year later, my client gets a collection letter for a second auto insurance policy. The bill was never paid, and they tried to come after my client … a year later. So that just shows how identity theft is more than just financial. His license could have been suspended or revoked.
It’s an onion. When we work with a victim, they come to us with one problem. By the time we’ve done, we usually find three or four more.
What to Know about Investigating These Cases
HUMPHREYS: What do private investigators need to know about investigating identity theft? What will they learn in your classes?
KERSKIE: A lot of private investigators come from law enforcement. They think working with identity theft victims is get the evidence and prove who did it, That is irrelevant when it comes to restoration.
There are laws in place that protect victims. We don’t have to identify the “bad guy.” We’re being an advocate for the victim. We just have to document that the client is a victim of identity theft. Usually, it’s police report or a Federal Trade Commission affidavit. And then we work with the companies to mitigate it.
As investigators, we have this skill set. We know how to talk on the phone and ask the right questions to get to the right answer or the right person. These are things we do on a daily basis that you can apply to helping victims recover.
There’s no shortage of victims. This work is recession-proof. When the economy gets worse, victims increase. First quarter of 2021, because of the PPP, EIDL, we were turning away victims because we were at capacity.
In these classes, we show you the right way to work with identity theft victims and 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.”
How Investigators Can Help Victims
HUMPHREYS: What are some real-world ways private investigators can help victims of identity theft?
KERSKIE: One is restoration: helping them recover and restore their identity so they can move on with their lives. The other is prevention: helping people put in place measures to make their identity difficult to use.
For example, the simplest thing is a credit freeze. It’s free, it’s mandated by federal law, but the credit bureaus are making it difficult. They bury it on their site. So I tell everybody, “Go freeze your credit.” And if they don’t know how to do this, we just charge a flat rate, go to people’s homes, get everything put in place for them, leave all the documentation with them. That’s another service you can offer.
HUMPHREYS: A credit freeze is a preventative measure that stops a lot of the problems right up front.
KERSKIE: A credit freeze — it’s mandated by federal law, which 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. It’s just for anything new. 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.
There are laws in place that protect victims. We don’t have to identify the “bad guy.” We just have to document that the client is a victim of identity theft.
HUMPHREYS: What would you say to investigators who are considering taking your classes or getting into the business?
KERSKIE: How confident are they that their business is going to be around if the economy goes south? In 2008, 2009, that was when we really started 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 were cutting back. Everyone was affected. The thing that kept us afloat through that whole time: identity theft cases.
Also: you’re not having to learn a whole new thing. It’s not like learning OSINT, where there is a steep learning curve. This is using skills that you already have. And we have it structured now where some clients have us on retainer. They pay us an annual fee to do all this for them. So we have recurring revenue as a private investigating agency. How often does that happen?
HUMPHREYS: Carrie, where can people connect with you and find out more about your work?
KERSKIE: Easiest way: go to my website: carriekerskie.com. We also have a YouTube channel, and I’m available on Linked In as Carrie Kerskie.
HUMPHREYS: Any final words you want to share?
KERSKIE: if you’re an investigator and you haven’t considered identity theft investigations, I would highly suggest you at least consider it.
About our esteemed guest:
Carrie Kerskie is a private investigator and president of Kerskie Group, LLC, which she founded in 2001 in Naples, Florida. She and her team have helped thousands of victims restore their identities and their finances after being victims of fraud, cyber-attack, or identity theft. She’s a PI Education instructor and sought-after public speaker on identity theft and fraud, and she’s written two books: Your Public Identity: Because Nothing is Private Anymore and Protect Your Identity. You can find her on LinkedIn.