Bankruptcy Indiana

The Indiana Attorney General's Office warns Hoosiers to do all we can to protect ourselves from scam and identity theft. There have been so many recent instances of identity theft, a new law was put into effect just this month by the Indiana General Assembly to protect consumers, giving additional powers to the Attorney General's office to investigate and prosecute identity theft crimes.

Our state is one of many whose legislators have responded to concerns about identity theft by passing new protective laws.  Indiana University Alumni Association Magazine explained that while the majority of identity theft incidents actually involve credit card fraud, there is a frightening number of reports of "data breaches" in which entire companies' records on customers or patients were stolen by identity thief hackers.

As a bankruptcy attorney in Indiana, I try to warn all my blog readers as well as well as my clients of the dangers of scams and identity theft.
First of all, many predators specifically target victims who have filed bankruptcy or who are desperately trying to stave off bankruptcy, offering "help" of different kinds in negotiating with lenders, repairing credit, and the like, all for the purpose of stealing victims' identity.  The increasing prevalence of such scams is one of the reasons I keep urging people to seek legal counseling at the first signs of financial distress.

The 2009 Identity Fraud Survey Report, released just this past February, confirms that the number of identity fraud victims has increased 22% to almost ten million people! It is always sad for me to see innocent people being made to suffer by criminals.  It makes me even sadder when the people being hurt are already dealing with job layoffs or overwhelming medical catastrophes and are trying to get past these problems and rebuild their financial lives.