Freeporters clean house to prevent fraud

On April 25, cars lined up in the parking lot of the Freeport Recreation Center as people waited to unload boxes and bags full of documents with Social Security numbers, birth dates, account numbers, passwords, deposits slips and other papers that they could not easily throw away.
To prevent fraud, AARP New York teamed up with Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas and State Attorney General Eric Scheiderman’s offices to host a spring-cleaning event, providing trucks from Quality Shredding of Deer Park to safely dispose of sensitive documents.
“Identity thieves are constantly coming up with new and creative ways to take advantage of victims — especially older New Yorkers,” Schneiderman said.
“AARP’s shredding events are a good opportunity to prevent scammers from getting a hold of your sensitive personal information,” he continued, “and I’m pleased New Yorkers are taking advantage of this change to help keep identity thieves at bay.”
According to AARP New York, in the last year state residents have registered some 112,000 fraud complaints with the Federal Trade Commission, including 20,000 for identity theft.

“Unfortunately, scammers with just a few bits of information can do exactly what you don’t want them to do, which is steal your personal information,” said T.J. Hatter, Long Island director of intergovernmental affairs at Schneiderman’s office.
Quality Shredding employees assisted residents and visitors to Freeport with dumping their documents into their truck, which shreds the documents onsite.
“From here, we take the paper to our plant and we bale it,” said Tobi Innerfield, owner of Quality Shredding. “The paper goes from us to the paper mill, where it all gets recycled into paper products like toilet paper and paper towels.”
Bernard Macias, associate state director of AARP Long Island, spent much of the morning introducing himself to participants in the shredding event and encouraged them to spread the word to friends and family members about the need to keep their personal information safe.
“We’re doing about a dozen of these types of events across New York state,” Macias said. “We’re expecting a lot of poundage of paper. People are looking to get rid of important documents in a safe way. You don’t want to throw that into the garbage. Scammers are out there. They’re going through your garbage and looking for the information they need — enough to scam you.”
Residents from came to Freeport from throughout Nassau County to take part in the shredding event. Joanna Turtletown, of Port Washington, said she spent an hour gathering 10 years’ worth of documents that she had been hoarding because she didn’t know how to get rid of them safely.
“I thought I could get through the attic and get rid of all the paper,” she said. “It was a lot of stuff. I’m concerned about identity theft. and I thought it was much better if I had things shredded.”
The Nassau County District Attorney’s office has been making headway in investigating and prosecuting fraud cases. Singas said, regardless of how difficult and time-consuming the cases might be, her staff is dedicated to helping victims.
“Identity-theft cases and scams associated with it are something that we … fight against every day,” she said. “It’s also important to educate our community consumers about how criminals operate and how they use the information to victimize them.”