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Creditinfo provides service to prevent identity theft within seconds
-Don’t get caught in an “Olive Gopaul moment”- Business development manager urges
It was only a few weeks ago that a warrant was issued for the arrest of a 47-year-old woman who, posing as one of Guyana’s local beauty queens, Olive Gopaul, was able to fraudulently obtain money from several prominent business entities.
But members of Guyana’s only credit bureau—Creditinfo, are contending that such an unfortunate situation could have been prevented in just one minute.
David Falconer, Manager of Sales and Business Development
The credit bureau is an organization which collects credit information from lending and information agencies, analyses it and provides a comprehensive report which reflects the payment history of the consumer via a credit score (statistical data). This report is a called a credit report and is provided free of cost to consumers annually.
Specifically speaking to the issue of identity theft was Chief Executive Officer of the company, Judy Semple-Joseph. The CEO asserted that in the case of Ms. Gopaul the bureau could have been able to verify the identity which the fraudster tried to impersonate if the businesses she swindled as well as Gopaul were connected to the company.
Ms. Semple-Joseph articulated this notion during an informative presentation which was facilitated at the Ballet Room of the Cara Lodge Hotel in Georgetown last night.
She asserted that one of the features of the bureau is that it prevents situations like these and it is therefore urging members of the public to ensure that they put mechanisms in place so that in the case of anyone trying to use their identity to solicit credit or even cash at a store, it could be prevented within seconds.
Reiterating this point was David Falconer, Manager of Sales and Business Development. He said that the company is always pulling information from multiple sources and updating their system, hence it is virtually impossible for persons to get credit from any lender by impersonating someone else.
“We would have had the biographic information of the individual as well as other information and we would have been able to cross reference that with the agencies. In fact, we are even looking to boast our system and add in the TIN number aspect to the biographic information as a primary means of identification because we are aware that a few of the biographic information are susceptible to change but the TIN number remains static. Nevertheless, we have a number of systems in place that are virtually impervious to the best tricks of the most ingenuous con man. Our system is designed to protect the identity of our clients among other things. And the TIN number aspect is a work in progress.”
Falconer stressed that the Olive Gopaul case would have never had happened under the bureau’s watch.
He reiterated the call by his colleague in urging citizens to get on board the modern way to protect their identities.
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