The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) conducts independent investigations, audits, inspections, and special reviews of United States government departments, personnel and programs to detect and deter waste, fraud, abuse and misconduct, and to promote integrity, economy, and effectiveness in Department operations. (This report covers only the Department of Justice).

Typically, the OIG's reports review the finances and activities of each of the Department's nine bureaus. This particular report, however, reviews the entire Department of Justice's activities around Identity Theft since President Bush created the Identity Theft Task Force in May 2006. The report notes that Identity Theft continues to be a growing problem that victimized more that 10 million Americans in 2008 (the last year for which any data is available).

Given this trend, you'd think the U.S. Department of Justice would have made significant progress in addressing this high growth crime. In fact the opposite is true. The data and conclusions in the report about the Department's efforts to combat Identity Theft are truly disturbing. Some of the issues are noted below.

1. No work on a strategy to combat Identity Theft has been done since the President Bush task force issued its initial report in May 2007.

2. Despite the growth in Identity Theft, the number of defendants charged and convictions obtained appears to have declined from 2008 to 2009. I say "appears to" because the data collected on Identity Theft prosecutions is so poor, not even the Department itself puts much faith in it.

3. The Department does not collect sufficient data on the Frequency and nature of Identity Theft. What little reporting it does occurs very slowly. The results of the Justice's 2006 Identity Theft survey are not expected to be released until this coming summer.

4. There is currently a consistent lack of leadership and accountability on Identity Theft issues across all bureaus within the Department of Justice including the two you'd like to believe would be leading the battle against Identity Theft; the FBI and the Criminal Division responsible for Federal crimes.

5. It's not a pretty picture. It does, however, explain at least part of the reason why identity Theft is growing so quickly. Besides being a relatively easy crime to commit, the odds of getting caught, let alone prosecuted, at least in the U.S. are very small. This situation obviously won't change until something fundamental in our approach to addressing the problem does. We can only hope the OIG's (Office of Inspector General) report spurs that change.

In the meantime it is more important than ever that consumers do what they can to protect themselves from the criminal internet gangs that now perpetrate most identity theft. PGP's CEO, Phil Dunkelberger, wrote a pair of blogs on exactly how to do this in late 2006. While it's been more than three years, the recommendations are still valid. The first piece focuses on how to protect yourself on old style offline Identity Theft and the second piece on how to protect yourself from online Identity Theft. The only thing I will add is that if you can only do one thing, order your credit report frozen. It's easy and either cheap or free depending upon where you live. MSNBC.com has a nice guide and all the links you'll need to freeze your credit report. END OF REPORT. NOTE: They did not say how or where to find it. How to locate this information is not know by Atad Corporation, so we suggest that click on and read our "Protect-My-Self." section on the left side of the home page