The Identity Theft Council is a community response to a crisis. And identity theft is at crisis level.

In the last two years alone there were nearly 20 million victims of identity theft in the United States. That works out to an average of more than 20,000 victims every seven days. To put that in perspective, that's more that the total number of burglaries, attempted burglaries, petty thefts, purse snatchings, pickpocketings, arsons, shoplifting, check fraud, and auto thefts combined.

What's worse, there are few identity thefts that don't involve other crimes, from burglary and drug abuse, to pickpocketing and check fraud. And with law enforcement unable to investigate more than a small percentage of these cases, victims are feeling abandoned and criminals emboldened.

The Identity Theft Council is creating a national network of local partnerships between law enforcement, the business community, and local volunteers to provide local and in-person support to these victims, in the communities where they live.

The council provides identity theft victims with greater long term support and recovery assistance in their local community and at the same time helping to reduce the incidence of identity theft by improving local awareness and education.

Our Mission and Goals

The Identity Theft Council is founded on a simple premise – that every community, no matter how small, has resources that can be harnessed to combat identity theft: to help victims recover from the crime, to ease the burden on law enforcement, and to educate users about the many options they have to avoid the crime.

Our mission is to find more effective ways to fight identity theft at a local level, and we hope to achieve this in a number of ways:

• By providing victims of identity theft with free access to local experts and trained counselors who are volunteering their time to help victims recover from identity theft.

• By working with local credit unions and banks to encourage their employees to become trained volunteer identity theft counselors.

• By partnering with law enforcement, providing them with free training and other resources, so they can provide a more positive response to victims.

• By working with a broad network of local partners, including the financial community, law enforcement, local government, local businesses, and schools, to spread the “prevention through education” message to the broader community.

• By creating local Identity Theft Councils in communities across the country as a single point of response and support.
  

Learn more about our history and background

Click here to learn more about how the program works.

Identity theft victims lose more than money

While some victims of identity theft ultimately lose little financially, many victims will face months if not years of effort and worry as they attempt to recover from the crime and restore their credit and good name.

Local Identity Theft Councils will help victims through the process of response and recovery, and at no charge to the victims. Each council is a partnership between local law enforcement, credit unions and banks, Chambers of Commerce, and locally trained volunteer counselors.

Locally trained counselors will be the first responders to local victims in need of help.

The Identity Theft Council is recognized by the IRS as a tax-exempt 501(c)3 non-profit and is registered in California as a Non Profit Public Benefit Corporation.

The Council was created by nationally renowned security expert Neal O’Farrell, and is supported by numerous local and national organizations including the National Council of Better Business Bureaus, the Identity Theft Assistance Center (ITAC), in Washington DC, Elder Financial Protection Network, the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA), the Online Trust Alliance (OTA), and many others.

* Javelin Research and Strategy