The rise of identity theft for high-net-worth individuals

With each passing day, it seems like computers, tablets, and cellphones get “smarter,” enabling us to do more than ever imagined. With just our phones, we can make bank deposits, open a garage door, communicate with our pets, and even find out what’s in our refrigerators. Unfortunately, those conveniences also come with added risks.

Data breaches have become an unfortunate reality. No one is immune from identity theft and fraud attempts, but high-net-worth individuals (HNWI), often defined as households with at least $1 million in assets, are often targeted because they typically have varied and many holdings.

To help simplify the often complex and important details of identity theft and fraud, Director of Security Outreach Amber Buening shared insight to constant threats. She told us that with so much focus in the news on cyber and fraud events, it’s easy to tune these stories out.

“Identity theft and fraud have impacted people of every demographic and socioeconomic category—from retirees on a fixed income to business owners, but high-net-worth individuals are specifically targeted due to their diverse and deep holdings,” she says.

Cyber criminals and fraudsters are constantly developing new ways to commit identity theft and fraud. “They’re relentless, and they’re smart,” Buening says. “With each new safeguard institutions put into place, cyber criminals and fraudsters are devising new methods to crack them.”

According to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, there were 880,418 internet crime complaints in 2023, with potential losses exceeding $12.5 billion. Of those, there were 21,489 business emails compromised, a form of phishing, complaints amounting to $2.9 billion in reported losses^†. And that’s just the attacks that were reported.

Unique challenges for HNWI

While cyber criminals and fraudsters will attack everybody and anybody, they’re paying more attention to HNWI.

“With any individual, HNWI or not, much of the data used to victimize them is obtained by these bad actors using two methods: open-source intelligence gathering and through illicit means, such as using stolen data available on the dark web, and others,” Buening says.

Open-source intelligence (OISNT) refers to information on an individual, company, or account that’s publicly accessible, or available by request. Collecting this information can involve searching through social media sites, news stories, and public state records.

HNWI are targeted because they:

• Typically deal with larger transactions, so smaller fraudulent ones often go unnoticed
• Tend to have more accounts, making it more difficult to monitor them all effectively
• Don’t have the time to monitor their accounts diligently
• Often assume their financial advisor is handling identity theft and fraud detection for them

Information gathering tactics

Much of the data used to victimize is obtained through illicit means. In 2024, billions of records have been compromised from companies like AT&T, Bank of America, Dell, Ticketmaster, and most recently National Public Data. National Public Data supports services like background checks, and this leak may contain full names, addresses, social security numbers, birthdates, and family relationships. When data obtained from breaches becomes available on the dark web, opportunities increase for scammers to attempt identity theft, financial fraud, and other malicious activities.

The emergence of powerful artificial intelligence learning models and applications also changed the security landscape for better and for worse. These tools helped enhance threat detection and bolster defenses, but also enabled fraudsters to victimize at a larger and more sophisticated scale. This evolution is predicted to have a significant impact on the threat landscape in the years to come–and underscores the need for HNWI to prioritize security.

Cyber criminals and fraudsters are constantly gathering this information. They might not know the best way to launch an attack at first, but by gathering that data and finding more connections between individuals, they can start to put the pieces together. Eventually, they’ll identify the best approach for an attack.

Actions you can take to protect your identity

• Treat your personal information like you do money–use strong passwords and practice good password management.
• Contact your financial institutions if your accounts or credit lines have been affected.
• Place a fraud alert on your credit report by contacting one of the three reporting agencies Experian, Equifax, or TransUnion.
• File an identity theft report at IdentityTheft.gov to put a plan in place and track your progress.
• File a police report to complete the identity theft report and obtain a copy of the police report and report number.
• Add an identity theft rider to homeowners or renters insurance to help pay for the cost of restoring your identity that may cover additional expenses.

In addition to these steps, consider changing all of your existing passwords, get a new driver’s license and contact the Social Security fraud hotline.

Getting the advice you may need

At Huntington, we’re working on multiple fronts to help protect our HNWI clients’ identities and assets. Connect with your Huntington Private Bank advisor to outline a plan that can help alleviate your concerns. To learn more, please contact your Huntington Private Bank team to see how we can help, or find a Huntington Private Bank Office near you.