211 Crime Prevention
Resources Guide
If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, please call 911.
If you believe you may have information about a trafficking situation:
- Call the National Human Trafficking Hotline toll-free hotline at 1-888-373-7888
- Text the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 233733
- Chat with the National Human Trafficking Hotline 24/7 at humantraffickinghotline.org/chat
If you need resources, reach out to 211.
What is Benefits Trafficking?
An emerging crime which targets at-risk adults to gain access to their monthly benefits and perpetrate various types of abuse, theft, and fraud. Victims are often held in deplorable conditions while owners/operators of care homes live off victims’ monthly benefits.
Benefits Trafficking is the systematic recruitment, harboring, neglect, and financial exploitation of older and disabled adults who receive government benefits such as Social Security, Veteran’s Benefits, Medicaid, and Medicare. Traffickers often pose as kind-hearted individuals offering to provide care for at-risk adults in an in-home setting.
If you discover or suspect Benefits Trafficking
- If someone is in immediate danger, call 9-1-1
- To ensure the safety of the person, contact the Adult Abuse and Neglect Hotline to report the situation
- To report the situation at a facility or home, contact the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Hotline
- Advocate for the person by contacting a long-term care ombudsman
Identity theft and fraud are crimes in which an impostor gains access to key pieces of personal identifying information (PII) such as a Social Security number (SSN) and driver’s license number and uses them for personal gain or to commit other criminal activities. In the case of true name identity theft, the thief goes beyond stealing the victim’s assets and actually assumes his or her identity. Identity theft may begin with a lost or stolen wallet, pilfered mail, a data breach, a computer virus, phishing, a scam, or paper documents thrown out by an individual or a business and retrieved by a thief (dumpster diving).
Types of Identity Theft Crime
Identity theft and fraud can be a wide variety of crimes committed under different circumstances. These crimes may include:
- check fraud
- credit/debit card fraud
- immigration fraud
- postal fraud
- medical fraud
- outright theft of various kinds (pick pocketing, robbery, burglary, or mugging to gain a victim’s personal information)
- criminal activities ranging from counterfeiting and forgery to using a stolen identity to commit acts of terrorism
It may even involve combining personal information from several victims to create a fictitious identity (synthetic identity theft), which is not always detectable by the consumer(s) whose information was used.Today, criminals continue to find opportunities to exploit their victims through the lack of security measures for protecting personal identifying information. Personal data is widely scattered with much of it outside an individual’s control. Nationwide databases, IT security issues, and continuous requests for Social Security numbers contribute to vulnerability of personal information.
Know Your Rights…
If someone is using your information to open new accounts or make purchases, report it and get help.
If someone steals your identity, you have the right to:
- create a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Identity Theft Report
- place a one-year fraud alert on your credit report
- get free copies of your credit report
- get fraudulent information removed (or “blocked”) from your credit report
- dispute fraudulent or inaccurate information on your credit report
- stop creditors and debt collectors from reporting fraudulent accounts
- get copies of documents related to the identity theft
- stop a debt collector from contacting you
What To Do Right Away:
If you are a victim of identity theft, the FTC recommends these steps:
- File a complaint with the FTC at identitytheft.gov
- Contact one of the three major credit bureaus to place a ‘fraud alert’ on your credit records:
- Equifax, www.Equifax.com, 800-525-6285
- Experian, www.Experian.com, 888-397-3742
- TransUnion, www.TransUnion.com, 800-680-7289
- Contact your financial institutions, and close any financial or credit accounts opened without your permission or tampered with by identity thieves