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Hiday, one of the speakers at today’s Economic Crimes Summit at Viterbo University, said the fraud supported a drug and gambling habit.
But she also found it more addictive than the drugs, she said.
When store clerks would accept her phony checks, “it was a rush that would go up in your body,” she said Wednesday. “You’re walking away going ‘That’s right!’ or ‘Yeah!’ because you beat the system.”
After being convicted of felonies, Hiday decided it wasn’t the kind of life she wanted for her three daughters. She overcame her drug addiction, turned her life around and now works as a job counselor for ex-convicts at the Second Chance program in San Diego.
She also assists the San Diego district attorney’s office with its prevention and educational activities.
She got away with check fraud partly because store clerks didn’t notice her fake ID cards. “All they were looking at was to see whether the name on the ID matches the check,” Hiday said. “They’re not looking at the hologram” on the ID card.
She recommends retailers have customers pull ID cards out of their wallet. “Take that extra second to look at it,” Hiday said.
She also stole mail out of home mailboxes and U.S. Postal Service blue mailboxes, and would use the numbers and other information from the enclosed checks to create her own check blanks. She would put the enclosed checks back in the mail, so they would reach their intended destination. “That gave me more time to use their account,” Hiday said.
San Diego authorities learned a lot about fraud by debriefing Hiday, said Joan Knothe Stein, a La Crosse native and deputy district attorney in San Diego who also is a presenter at today’s summit. Stein, a 1969 Aquinas High School graduate, has specialized in prosecuting economic crimes for the past three years.
There are many kinds of economic crimes, Stein said. As for the perpetrators’ motives, she said, “I’ve seen people who wanted a lot of easy money, either for a gambling habit, a drug habit. Or embezzlers — they’re either people who think deep down they really deserve a raise. Or they sometimes think, ‘Well, I’ll just borrow a little bit to get through, and I’ll pay it back.’” But before long, they’ve “borrowed” more than they can ever repay.
Retailers need to encourage employees to be alert and carefully check ID cards, Stein said.
Identity theft is growing, she said. “Once you’ve got someone’s Social Security number, that’s the key to everything,” she said. “So if you’re going to be careful about only one thing, it would be to get your Social Security card out of your wallet; put it in a safe place and leave it there.”
