Credit Monitoring

Last month I attended an industry conference called Western States Acquirers Association, which brings together merchant service providers and its vendors in the payment processing space. The keynote speaker this year was Frank Abagnale, Jr., (of Catch Me if You Can fame, a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio based on Frank’s true story) who lived a life of crime from counterfeiting checks and impersonating various professions. Aside from his incredibly fascinating life story, after having been caught and imprisoned in three countries, the FBI arranged for his early release on the condition that he work with them to track other counterfeiters and fraudsters. After 39 years in the FBI, he is arguably the foremost authority on fraud of every kind in the country.

Nearly a trillion dollars worth of fraud was perpetrated against Americans last year – mostly in the form of fake tax returns, Medicaid theft, and food stamp fraud caused by identity theft. By his estimation, every person in the U.S. has already had their personal data stolen and it is only a matter of time until it is sold and used. Scary – very scary – but aside from great information from his three published books on identity theft, there are a number of companies that can perform credit monitoring and internet surveillance of your personal information. Privacy Guard is one such good company, so we urge all stakeholders of Dharma Merchant Services to take the initiative to protect themselves from what can be a nightmarish loss of time, money, and effort in resolving identity theft matters.