Identity Theft: The Michelle Brown Story

When something is part of your daily experience, it’s really hard to think that for somebody else it could be uncommon or even bizarre. For some of my American friends it is really hard to imagine that somebody may not know what Fred Mayer is (<ItalianCaption>Una catena di supermercati, niente di esoterico</ItalianCaption>), while for an Italian is pretty hard to figure out how in every movie the bad guy can enter a house without forcing the door (usually the house door in Italy is self-locking: once you leave the house and close it, you need the keys if you want to re-enter).

One consequence of that is that certain phenomena are not always explained in a way that results understandable by everybody, exactly because we tend to rely on so much assumed knowledge from the audience. Th entire idea of identity theft (and identity crime, a different animal) is a good example: here in the States the knowledge of certain personal data (addresses, document numbers…) allow the thieves to perform stunts impossible elsewhere, such as opening bank accounts in the name of the victim and buying by credit, opening mail boxes for illicit traffic, starting credit cards… the list is long. The danger of somebody digging in you phisical mail is high: and you receive surprisingly risky junk mail, inlcuding preapproved credit cards in your name that anybody can steal, activate and use until it gets you in troubles. All those things can be explained, but for gaining an intuitive grasp of it there’s a shortcut: this movie, based on a true story, describes the disasters that happen to an identity theft victim. If you have access to cable, it’s going to play on Lifetime on October 25th. Check it out!