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Not long ago, someone posed as me at three bank branches and Chances are higher now that something similar will happen to you. This kind of old-fashioned in-person identity theft is on the rise after fraudsters grew more sophisticated during the pandemic, improving their illicit supply chain that makes it easier to pull off these crimes. The surge is frustrating banks and the government as they try to meet the resurrected threats.

"Yours is not a one-off," Mary Ann Miller, fraud and cybercrime executive adviser at digital identity solution firm Prove Identity, said about my recent run-in with ID theft, which "An actor walking into branches and doing what they did with your account, withdrawing money, is a trend," she said. "It's happening right now." ID theft swelled during the pandemic when the federal government delivered $5 trillion in relief to businesses and households through stimulus checks, enhanced unemployment benefits and food aid, and forgivable loans.



"It was what I call the big money grab," Miller said, and criminals wanted a piece of it. They "skilled up" at creating fake identities and stealing existing ones, Miller said, so they could fraudulently file for these pandemic benefits. And it worked.

They stole $300 billion in pandemic relief, according to , representing the biggest fraud in history. That success emboldened fraudsters to keep going. "They've taken those learnings," Miller said, "and they've continued to get better and better at what they do.

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