Drugged For Money

I recently read an article about an elderly man who was drugged for money. He was given medication put in his coffee to steal his money. I’m not sure if the crime was committed by a restaurant insider or someone else, but the disoriented man was hit by a train as he was walking the streets of Italy completely unconscious while his wife was looking for him. This is a very sad story that unfortunately may not be an isolated case and could be identity theft related. Such cases might even increase overtime due to increased use of biometric identification or human implanted RFID chips.

When dealing with personal information and identity theft protection, experts always advocate best practices for physically protecting our computers which might contain personal information or our passports, wallets, credit cards, and other personal documents. We hardly hear about protecting our body and alertness as well as maintaining our awareness about the safety of our surrounding or the foods that we purchase and consume in public places which might be drugged for identity theft purposes. As our society moves toward biometric and RFID identification, identity fraud using our unconscious bodies might increase.

A biometric identification relies on a person’s physical characteristics that are unique to each person to identify an individual. Biometric identification can include retinal scanning, iris scanning, voiceprint identification, fingerprint and handprint scanning. As such, if a person’s physical characteristics are used to identify the person for certain transactions such as getting cash from the bank or accessing a computer system, then the person might be poisoned for identity theft, money or other identity fraud purposes.

As this story proves, it is possible although less probable and widespread now that medication use may become a trend as a tool to commit identity theft. But what is a person to do, not eat in the restaurants or visit a coffee shop? I remember years ago bombs were exploding in the French malls and public mailboxes. People stopped going to the malls for a while but soon after started shopping again due to increased security and restored public confidence.

As increased cases of people being poisoned for money or identity theft emerge, the society including government agencies, financial institutions, and business community must come together to reduce identity theft risks and build consumer confidence because not only identity theft will increase, but the economy will also tank due to low public confidence.

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