part III

A Secret Service official noted that losses to the victimized individuals and institutions associated with the agency’s investigation of financial crimes involving identity fraud totaled $442 million in 1995, $450 million in 1996, and $745 million in 1997. Moreover, the “human” costs of identity fraud are also quite substantial. These include emotional costs as well as various financial and/or opportunity costs. For example, victims may be unable to refinance their home, or in some other cases, obtain a job, purchase a car, or qualify for a mortgage.

Because a social security number can give a criminal almost complete access to a person’s entire financial history, learning how to safeguard one’s personal financial documents has become more important than ever. Even if you’ve got no money in the bank and owe thousands in student loans, if you’ve got a name, you’ve got something worth stealing. All it takes for your identity to be stolen is for you to be careless with one important financial document. By tossing one bank statement into the trash, or letting one credit card number be copied, you could be condemning yourself to losing your identity, and spending the next five years trying to reclaim it.

There are a number of ways to keep yourself from becoming a victim of identity theft. The experts advise you to never carry your social security card, birth certificate or passport in your wallet. They also advise you to carry only those credit cards that you regularly use. All other important documentation should be carefully hidden. You might opt to keep everything in a bank safe deposit box, but that generally limits your access. Therefore, if you’re serious about protecting your identity, you need to start looking around your home, yard and office for good and effective hiding places. Even when you think you’ve got nothing to hide, you probably do! And I’m here to help you find the perfect hiding spots.

But before you even begin to consider where to start hiding your assets, you have to understand one simple concept -- even the best hiding place is useless if someone is completely determined to find/steal your assets. So, the best way to keep your assets safe is not to let on that they even exist. This means that if you’ve just come into money, you don’t go out and buy yourself a new mansion, a new car or a new wife. Just ask any government investigator how they figured out that one of their own was a Russian spy and he’ll invariably answer, “Well, he bought himself a million dollar mansion on a government salary. You do the math!”

My point here is a simple one: the key to hiding your assets is discretion. As I always say, “STEALTH IS WEALTH.” If you’ve got it, don’t flaunt it. If you can resist showing everyone how rich you are, you’ll probably be rich longer.

The concept of “stealth is wealth” is something that “old money” Americans have adhered to for decades. They believe that ostentatious displays of money are garish, and they subscribe to the notion that it’s easier to hold on to your money when no one knows you have it. And while I don’t particularly care about whether someone deems my new home to be a garish display of new money, I do care if the I.R.S., deems my new home to be a garish display of new, unreported money.

The “stealth is wealth” lesson is one I learned from my father when I was only seven years old. After years of driving to his shoe store in a dilapidated, ten-year-old Buick station wagon, my father finally decided to purchase a Lincoln Continental -- the dream car for every successful immigrant. I still remember the day he brought the glimmering black Lincoln home and parked it in the driveway for the entire neighborhood to admire.

Within minutes, a large crowd of neighbors had gathered to ooh and aah, and for over an hour, my father fielded questions about his glorious new purchase. It wasn’t until my father prepared to pull the Lincoln into the garage for the evening, that the tone of the gathered crowd began to change.

”Guess the shoe business is doing pretty well,” his close friend from next door muttered, his voice tinged with jealousy. And before my father could respond, another neighbor asked excitedly, “Now that you’re in the money, maybe you would consider investing in my son’s new business. From the looks of things, you’ve got more than enough to spare.”

For the next few weeks, our phone began to ring off the hook with business proposals, loan requests and in one case, an arranged marriage for me with a neighbor’s less than attractive daughter. It seemed that with one high profile purchase, my father had in the eyes of the neighborhood transformed himself from the owner of a small, moderately successful shoe store into a titan of high finance.

Every night after he arrived home from work, neighbors would drop by to tell their tales of financial woe. Before my mother had finished bringing out the coffee cups and cake, they’d be asking for a loan. “You can afford it,” they’d say with a glance towards the garage.

When my father would decline their requests and politely explain that he was just a small businessman trying to support a family, the atmosphere in the room would turn chilly. Behind his back, the neighbors called my father stingy, greedy and rotten. And to his face, they were cold and disapproving. The general perception in the neighborhood was that Mr. Schneider had made good, but he wouldn’t share. And soon, my father’s joy in his Lincoln turned to discomfort as he drove down our street past jealous and resentful neighbors.