Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Crime Pattern ID: Medical Identity Theft

Pattern: Medical Identity Theft

Victims: patients of doctors, hospitals, clinics

Perpetrators: variety of types of identity thieves, persons who want to obtain health-care fraudulently or sell identities for people who want health care or to use/sell the information for credit card fraud (based on SSN and other identifiers in stolen records) or insurance fraud by medical professionals, may be inside job

Locations: medical offices, medical file rooms, cyberspace/computers

Times: not a significant factor, thefts from offices of files would occur outside of office hours in burglaries, although larcenies could occur during office hours as well

Entry/Approach Methods: may be inside job - staff stealing records, copying them or emailing them; may be burglary, may steal medical professionals laptops

Tools: knowledge of medical identity theft benefits, computer skills

Vehicles/Transportation Routes: not significant variable except in crime series

Stolen Goods: health identity

Method: stealing patients medical records, sometimes fraud in medical records for insurance money/drugs/other benefits

Motive: profit and/or health care and/or insurance fraud

Query Terms: doctor and office, clinic and office, records, files, insurance, identity, benefits, fraud, hospital and office, etc.

Suggestions: locally theft of records from medical offices may be noted in narratives of crime reports, criminals may search for record info in trash, medical staff computers may be stolen - look for these things and track them, follow up with investigators to gather more information on these cases

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