This advice was offered yesterday by US identity theft expert Robert Rebhan and former hacker-turned- security specialist Kevin Mitnick. Both spoke at a conference entitled "Art of the Steal," hosted by the Chamber of Industry and Commerce at Queen’s Hall.

Rebhan, a former Los Angeles Police Department officer, told his audience that identity theft and other fraud-related crimes are a worldwide problem, from which TT is not immune. "In TT, we are seeing little pieces of this right now," he stated. Rebhan added that while these types of crimes are only "sparks" at this time in TT, law enforcement agencies, businesses and other stakeholders must be pro-active in ensuring that fraud and related crimes are stamped out.

Listing the numerous ways in which organised crime seeks to make mileage out of various forms of identity theft, Rebhan said their targets are usually unsuspecting young people, and persons who commit offences such as drug addiction are more likely to find forgiveness compared to persons who commit financial crimes.

Noting that criminals spend considerable sums of money to import state-of-the-art technology and seemingly harmless commodities (like PVC sheeting) to commit identity fraud, Rebhan said one of the ways in which people can protect themselves from criminals is to perfect their "John Hancock (handwriting)" since the more refined someone’s signature is, the more difficult it is to duplicate.

He added that the hospitality industry is particularly vulnerable to identity theft and recalled one instance in Texas where someone who was believed to be a regular visitor at a certain hotel was actually a drug dealer who used his hotel suite as a drug-manufacturing laboratory.

Mitnick, who was once reputed as the world’s most famous hacker, who had even breached the North American Defence Command in 1982 (which laid the basis for the 1983 film War Games), said the best defence which businesses could have against the attacks of fraudsters and computer hackers is to go public with all of the tactics used by these individuals in order to expose them. He disagreed that the exposure of the various tactics of these criminals would breed more of their kind rather than help to solve the problem.

Addressing concerns raised about ATM fraud in Trinidad, Mitnick said companies must do more to educate their employees about all the various types of fraud and sensitise them, in the conduct of their duties, about what information about the business should be disclosed to the public.