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To examine identity theft in the United States and to provide an overview and assessment of recent legislation designed to assist identity theft victims and punish offenders.

Statistics on the prevalence of identity theft are included, as well as details from a fact‐based, fairly typical case of identify theft. An overview of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) and the Identity Theft Penalty Act (ITPEA) are provided, and the provisions of each act are analyzed.

It will take time to determine to what extent the provisions in FACTA and ITPEA will prevent or reduce identity theft. No doubt, in the future, there will amendments to both acts.

Future empirical studies could inform all interested parties by examining the impact of the FACTA and ITPEA over a multi‐year time frame. Moreover, cross‐cultural comparisons focusing on the ways in which other nations address identity theft will also shed light on the issues discussed herein.

The topic of identity theft remains salient to researchers as well as criminal justice practitioners and victim advocates. Public education to increase knowledge of identity theft, and to provide information and resources for victims, will be critical in the future.

Knowledge-sharing (KS) for preventing identity theft has become a major challenge for organisations. The purpose of this paper is to fill a gap in the literature by investigating barriers to effective KS in preventing identity theft in online retail organisations.

A framework was proposed based on a reconceptualisation and extension of the KS enablers framework (Chong et al., 2011). A qualitative case study research method was used for the data collection. In total, 34 semi-structured interviews were conducted in three online retail organisations in the UK.

The findings suggest that the major barriers to effective KS for preventing identify theft in online retail organisations are: lack of leadership support; lack of employee willingness to share knowledge; lack of employee awareness of KS; inadequate learning opportunities; lack of trust in colleagues; insufficient information-sourcing opportunities and information and communications technology infrastructure; a weak KS culture; lack of feedback on performance; and lack of job rotation.

The research provides solutions for removing existing barriers to KS in preventing identity theft. This is important to reduce the number of cases of identity theft in the UK.

This research extends knowledge of KS in a new context: preventing identity theft in online retail organisations. The proposed framework extends the KS enablers framework by identifying major barriers to KS in the context of preventing identity theft.

Employee theft is a significant part of retail losses from shrinkage, yet has been comparatively underexplored compared with shoplifting. The purpose of this paper is to assess the impacts of different forms of staff theft and fraud upon retail crime losses and analyse the characteristics of offenders.

The approach is based on a statistical analysis of the details (from retail records) of all staff offenders apprehended for theft by four major UK retailers over a two‐year period. The results are then compared with shrinkage losses for these retailers to discuss the implications of the findings.

Retailer concentration upon customer theft is difficult to explain given the significance of perceived staff theft on losses from crime. Only a small percentage of staff offenders were caught by retailers, but estimation problems were caused by the fact it was difficult to value the exact amount stolen over time by serial offenders. The majority of people apprehended were young and were believed to have stolen comparatively small amounts of cash or goods. In contrast, a small number of large‐scale offenders were responsible for 47 per cent of total known staff theft. Only a relatively small proportion of known staff crime involved collusion, the major losses were caused by theft of cash, major fraud losses, merchandise and refund fraud.

The implications of this study are significant for retailers. They suggest that retailers may concentrate on smaller‐scale wrongdoers rather than major frauds and that retailers may benefit from switching part of their loss‐prevention resources from shoplifting and minor staff offending to more considerable in‐house frauds.

The paper presents original data based on the characteristics of actual apprehended thieves rather than a discussion based primarily on shrinkage estimates). It presents new information for the academic community concerning the impact of different types of theft and fraud and challenges part at least of retailing conventional wisdom about “Who steals?” and “How?” It is valuable both to the academic community and to retail practitioners.

According to the American Institute of Criminology and Research, employee theft is responsible for over $50 billion worth of losses for both small and large businesses in the USA. Of this “shrinkage”, approximately 60 per cent is due to employee theft. Explains what kinds of activities constitute employee theft, and discusses the employee motivations, justifications and psychological drives, based on current social science thinking. Identifies the types of evidence ‐ documentary, physical, personal observations and testimonial ‐ and the techniques that can be used to gather this evidence and investigate the theft. Also discusses preventive measures in the form of revised employee reward systems and employee hot lines.

The consequences of employee theft have a profound impact on employers, employees, consumers, and society. Estimates of employee theft range from $40 to $400 billion a year in the USA alone. Although identifying employee theft is difficult, certain behavioral‐based studies have been able to separate employee theft from customer theft (shoplifting). The current study extends a behavioral‐based technique (posting) by posting total monetary loss and total items missing rather than posting the individual targeted items as in the prior studies. The study was conducted in an retail setting (one drug store in a large chain) for a 12‐week period. Data demonstrated posting was able to lower the amount of employee theft while also providing the ability to separate most of the losses caused by employee theft versus shoplifting. Furthermore, the results appear to reinforce the hypothesis that survey data alone may underestimate the actual amount of employee theft.

The purpose of this paper was to explore the identity theft victimization experiences of high school students, as well as the predictors of it being reported to school counselors.

In July and August 2014, an online survey was sent to every registered member of the American School Counselor’s Association (ASCA). School counselors were questioned about their experiences in regarding online victimization of their students.

Results of this analysis revealed extremely interesting predictors of school counselor demographics related to the number of reports filed by students.

There was a small response rate because the survey was sent to all registered members of the ASCA, instead of a specific targeted group (which would have been more appropriate).

The results indicate a need for further resources and training dedicated to school counselors to manage identity theft victimization of students.

As far as the authors are aware, no other study of this kind has previously been performed. In addition, there is little known about identity theft victimization of adolescents.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumer behaviour as it relates to identity theft and fraud.

Using survey data, this paper models the relationship between past experience of consumers and their levels of concern, and derives the principal components that make up consumer behaviours.

The components are physical prevention measures, account monitoring, agency monitoring, password security, and risky behaviour avoidance. These components were found to be almost orthogonal, implying that consumers tend to “buy into” a particular component of behaviour. The proposed model of consumer behaviour, while statistically significant, did not have high predictive value.

The survey data used were collected without reference to the model used in this paper, which limits the efficacy of the model.

Consumers use all the behaviours in one component without regard to other components. This can leave “holes” in consumer defence against identity theft and fraud. Consumer education on identity theft and fraud needs to stress that consumers need to employ all behaviours that can minimise risk and loss.

This paper puts forward an initial model of consumer behaviours as it relates to identity theft and fraud. The derivation of the orthogonal components of behaviour is a new and important finding.

Tax Identity Theft involves the illegal use of a potential taxpayer’s identity, usually the social security number, to fraudulently file a tax return and claim a refund. The victim is the real owner of the social security number who will have difficulties getting a tax refund, as the offender has already taken a refund for the year in question. This paper aims to investigate whether the increased use and adoption of electronic tax filing (i.e. E-Filing) technologies has inadvertently resulted in a corresponding growth in Tax Identity Theft.

Multiple regressions are used to analyze the data that is extracted from the Identity Theft complaint reports (maintained by the Federal Trade Commission) and the tax filing statistics (retrieved from the Internal Revenue Service).

The results indicate that E-Filing can indirectly but significantly increase Tax Identity Theft through the full mediation effects of individual Self-E-Filing and Direct Deposit adoption, after controlling for general Identity Theft, the number of Individual Tax Returns and Total Refunds.

The authors explore the association between the adoption of tax e-filing technologies and Tax Identity Theft. The findings suggest that the key loopholes in the Tax Identity Theft process are at the Self-E-Filing and the Direct Deposit points. Several practical recommendations for patching these loopholes are provided and discussed.

One area of concern for retailers is the impact of employee theft on retailing profit margins and operations. It is possible that the application of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to the employee theft could shine some light on the problem and possibly offer some assistance to retailers. The purpose of this paper is to apply TPB to this phenomenon.

A model and series of propositions are developed. The propositions are open to empirical verification and can form the basis for a research stream on retail employee theft.

The model incorporates certain individual difference factors that are likely to influence intentions to engage in retail theft. The model proposes that variables such as organizational commitment and an employee's moral norm are likely to have an impact on retail theft.

The propositions stemming from the model have to be tested empirically. The model incorporates certain individual difference factors that are likely to influence intentions to engage in retail theft. There are additional individual and external factors that will have direct and indirect on the variables in the proposed model.

Before efforts can be undertaken to stem employee theft, retail managers need to understand the phenomenon. The application of the TPB to this phenomenon is a step in that direction. It can provide insights to retail management on the nature of employee theft and who is likely to engage in it. In addition, information can be obtained for use in human resources efforts such as pre‐employment screening.

Prior work on retail employee theft has not applied the TPB in an effort to understand the phenomenon. This is an initial effort to do so.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the significance of the sources of cost of construction plant theft identified in previous studies and derive rates which can enhance proper estimation of the cost of plant theft to the construction industry. The direct and indirect costs of plant theft include replacement cost (new‐for‐old/depreciated), emergency cost, hire replacement cost, productivity loss, increased labour cost, loss of goodwill, administration cost, increased insurance premium and social cost.

The cost‐contribution of these various sources was studied, using a structured questionnaire which was administered to building contractors in the UK construction industry, to measure their opinions of the frequency and severity of the contribution of the sources to the cost of construction plant theft. The questionnaires were administered to 220 companies and 51 of them were fully completed, representing 23.1 per cent of the original sample. The responses were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics to derive the probabilities of sources contributing to the cost of plant theft.

The results of the analysis show that the rates of contribution to the cost of plant theft varies significantly between the sources, with “loss of output” and “increased insurance premium” ranking as the top‐two costs of plant theft in the UK construction industry. The rates derived in this study can be used by contractors to reasonably estimate the cost of plant theft, especially when there is need to justify the adoption of measures that can mitigate plant theft.

This study generated rates of contribution by factors which contribute to the overall cost of theft of construction plant in the UK. These rates can provide a more reliable estimate of the cost of plant theft than current estimations which vary significantly.