It’s one of those things that happens to someone else. When you hear it, you shake your head and express your sympathy and breathe a sigh of relief that it was someone else, and not you. But last week, it happened to me.
One morning a few years ago, I checked my bank app and saw that there was a $50 “counter withdrawal” from an account we haven’t used in a few months. I went to the bank and inquired. The bank teller asked me if I knew anyone in the state of Delaware, to which I replied in the negative. The teller then printed the bank check which had been submitted and handed it to me. Sure enough, it had my name, bank number, and signature. The only problem was that I hadn’t commissioned it or signed it.
My bank contacted their Delaware branch and was informed that the person who made the withdrawal had submitted ID with his picture and all my information. He provided my address, social security number, and phone number.
During the next few hours, I was busy securing my bank account and credit cards and adding whatever precautions and added security measures I could. Then I went down to my local police station and filed a police report.
The officer who filed my report told me that I was the seventeenth person in June to file such a report. Being that it was June 19, that meant that on average they dealt with one case of identity theft every day.
The bank had provided me with the driver’s license number that the scammer had provided along with my ID, so the police officer looked up the number and saw that it belonged to a woman in Westchester. Her information had been compromised as well, which she may have been unaware of. The expiration date the scammer provided didn’t match up with her license either, which means he had mixed and matched information from different people.
One’s reputation is one of the most precious commodities he has. We all work hard to build and maintain a positive reputation, because that serves as our identity in the eyes of others. When someone steals or manipulates that identity, it is a very personal violation and a terrible feeling.
Who is the biggest victim of identity theft? Every one of us. One of the greatest tactics that our evil inclination employs is to confuse us about who we really are, and what defines us.
It is intriguing that we refer to a person who learns Torah as a “ben Torah” (a son of Torah), but a sinner as a “ba’al aveirah” (a husband of sin). Being a son is a permanent state, while a husband is based on marriage, a matter of choice. When one learns Torah and performs mitzvos, it becomes part of his essence. Being that one’s essence is his soul, which is nourished through spiritual pursuits, all spiritual actions energize his soul and become part of his essence. When one commits a sin, however, it has a negative impact upon him, causing spiritual dissonance. However, the sin does not become part of his essence. Rather, it is like a cancerous growth that must be removed. In that sense, the one who sins isn’t the “son of the sin” but the “husband of the sin,” who needs to divorce himself from the iniquities he committed.
The problem is that there is an inner voice that tells us that our mishaps and sins define us. It seduces us into believing that we are as lowly as our misdeeds.
That is identity theft at its worst.
When we begin to believe we are someone other than who we are, we become the victims of the most cunning and egregious form of theft.
However, we, too, have security systems that can protect us. Works of mussar and chassidus help us maintain perspective, not only of right and wrong, but also of who we are and what defines us. We should take advantage of those vital security measures. They don’t cost any money, only some serious time and thought.
