This Is The State With The Most Identify Theft

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Oct 23, 8:34AM EDT

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This Is The State With The Most Identify Theft — © iip-photo-archive / Flickr

Identity is a huge problem in America. It cost people $56 billion last year, as 49 million people were victims, according to the 2021 Identity Fraud Study, released by Javelin Strategy & Research. Among the most common types are digital streaming, e-commerce, and electronic payments. While experts give consumers ways to stop the scams, the problem continues to grow. John Buzzard, Lead Analyst, Fraud & Security, at Javelin Strategy & Research commented:

“The pandemic inspired a major shift in how criminals approach fraud. Identity fraud has evolved and now reflects the lengths criminals will take to directly target consumers in order to steal their personally identifiable information.”

Identity fraud problems vary from place to place geographically. However, there is no absolutely hard evidence why this is so. There are several theories.

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24/7 Wall St. reviewed data from the Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book to identify the state with the most identity theft.

In 2020, by far the most common type of identity theft involved people fraudulently applying for government benefits. As the federal government offered loans to businesses and additional unemployment benefits because of the pandemic, there were nearly 400,000 reports of people fraudulently applying for or receiving benefits — a nearly 3,000% increase from the previous year.

In most cases, the person reporting fraud did not lose any money. Still, nearly three-quarters of a million Americans, just over a third of cases, were defrauded out of some money. The median loss in these cases was $311, yet nearly 40,000 Americans reported losing over $10,000 in some kind of criminal scam.

There does not appear to be any common through line between the states with the most identity theft per capita. The states near the top of the list run the gamut between big and small populations, high and low income, and they are located all across the country.

The state with the most identify theft is Kansas. Here are the details:

> Identity theft complaints: 1,483 per 100,000 (total: 43,211)
> Median loss for all types of fraud: $250 (13th lowest – tied)
> Most common form of ID theft: Government documents or benefits fraud (88% of total)
> Second most common form of ID theft: Other identity theft (5% of total)

Click here to read States WIth The Most Identity Theft

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.