THE SLEEPING “SENTINEL”

The Federal Trade Commission has all of 14 people working on Identity Theft issues and they spend a good deal of time proclaiming the government’s efforts on fighting identity theft crimes.

Their most significant claim is that their database of identity theft crimes, called “Consumer Sentinel” has helped law enforcement put criminals in jail. This database consists of the information captured by consumers who have filled out the FTC’s Identity Theft Affidavit. While, we at KnightsBridge Castle advise victims to fill out the FTC Affidavit in preparation for filing a police report and contacting creditors, we find the value of the affidavit in catching criminals is questionable.

The FTC makes the following claim for Sentinel –“Consumer Sentinel has a restricted-access site that allows law enforcement agencies access to hundreds of thousands of complaints from consumers about identity theft and Internet cons, telemarketing scams and other frauds. In just the last two years, law enforcers using Consumer Sentinel have brought hundreds of cases and returned millions of dollars to consumers.”

We have spoken with the fraud investigators of the major police departments in the Bay Area of California. KnightsBridge Castle regularly meets with both the federal crimes task forces and with police department fraud coordination teams. These fraud investigators, who are few in number and cover identity crimes affecting more than 6,500,000 people, have never heard of the Sentinel database. Police fraud investigators in the Bay Area tell us they have never accessed the database, they have not been trained in its use, and when informed of the database and its contents, they find no real value in consulting the resource. Raw data from victims without review by police and criminologists is of no real value in fighting crime. The presence of the Sentinel database may make victims feel better, and help the FTC’s public image; however the utility of the actual database is very low.

On the other hand, if the FTC claim is true -- that is that they have helped hundreds of cases in two years -- lets say 999 cases, then the hit rate against 17,000,000 crimes reported in two years is about 0.000058