ADOR and AGO Help Residents Protect Their Identities During Fall Shred-A-Thon at State Capitol

In the U.S. today, an individual becomes a victim to identity theft every two seconds, and nearly 88 percent of victims report ID thieves collected sensitive information from their trash. To help local taxpayers safeguard their identities, the Arizona Department of Revenue (ADOR) and Arizona Attorney General’s Office (AZAG) are teaming up to host the “Protect Your Identity” Shred-A-Thon from 8 a.m. to noon on Oct. 28, 2017. This free event will be held in front of the Arizona State Capitol, 1700 W. Washington.

Attorney General Mark Brnovich said, “Shredding personal documents will prevent bad actors from using your personal information to commit identity theft and open up bogus accounts in your name. This year, our office helped collect and destroy close to 10 tons of personal documents to protect Arizona families from identity theft.”

David Briant, ADOR Director, added, “The face of fraud continues to evolve, but the Arizona Department of Revenue’s fraud prevention program is constantly adapting and introducing new counter measures to identify identity theft and stop tax fraud in our state. Teaming up with the Attorney General’s Office for this event made sense because it’s a great way for us to help taxpayers safeguard their identities. Our volunteers are prepared to assist with this process in any way they can.”

Individuals or businesses wishing to safeguard their information sensitive documents can bring up to three business boxes for disposal. Three document destruction trucks will be on site to either haul away the documents for safe shredding, or participants can stay and watch the shredding process for peace of mind.

For those documents hauled away, the process is as follows:

  1. Volunteers will help dump the documents into a locked container.
  2. The locked container will be stored in a truck armed with a special Babaco lock.
  3. Once the event finalizes, the documents are transported to a secure shredding facility.
  4. The documents will be shredded at the secure facility; the material is then transported to a secure paper mill and processed into other products

For information on income tax identity theft, visit https://www.azdor.gov/IdentityTheft.aspx. You can also visit https://www.azag.gov/identity-theft for more details on identity theft, the impact and the process involved if victimized.