Crystal Meth cause of soaring identity theft in San Joaquin Valley

“Heat and smog aren’t the only hazards of the central San Joaquin Valley. Valley cities had some of the nation’s highest rates of identity theft in a recent Federal Trade Commission report. The Madera area ranked No. 2 for the number of complaints per capita, behind No. 1 Napa. Fresno, the Hanford-Corcoran area and the area including Visalia and Porterville all ranked in the top 50 of about 400 metropolitan areas with more than 100,000 population nationwide in 2006. Why? No one knows for sure, said FTC spokeswoman Claudia Bourne Farrell. But Fresno police Sgt. Doug Goertzen suggests there’s one major reason: methamphetamine. ‘We’re seeing a correlation between drug use and identity theft,’ he said. ‘It’s just a way of generating money to purchase drugs.’ Crooks who once robbed convenience stores for a couple hundred dollars now find they can get thousands of dollars via identity theft, Goertzen said.”