For communities like Fayetteville and Peachtree City, being nestled away in southwest metro Atlanta means nothing to a criminal industry that uses the Internet and the U.S. mail system with as much ease as most of us pick up a phone to call a friend.

A recent conference on identity theft attended by Fayetteville detectives reinforced just how successful identity thieves can be at their “chosen profession.”

Identity theft can take numerous forms, said Fayetteville detectives Marvin Vinson and Mike Whitlow. Discarded mailbox offers for credit cards and other financial offerings are often stolen out of trash cans and automobiles.

Thinking that it cannot happen is not an option, they said. Det. Jeff Harris suggested that residents shred those offers and disperse them into different trash bags to offset the chance that someone willing to go through trash will not be able to put the pieces together.

“People need to understand that this is their occupation,” Whitlow said of the identity thieves. “They’ll take the time to do what they do.”

An example of a case in Fayetteville in November shows that identity thieves have gone transcontinental and can end up in Fayette County. Vinson said a mailbox service here kept getting credit cards in different names that were mailed to the same rented mailbox.

With their suspicions aroused, store employees contacted detectives, who began doing the often arduous research needed to track down the perpetrator.

It turns out that credit card offers had been stolen in California and the perpetrator was setting up shop in Fayetteville, Vinson said.

Other forms of identity theft come over the Internet from computer hackers. Still others can be done at local businesses through the use of a pocket scanner in a technique called “skimming.”

“We often just hand the server our credit card when we get ready to pay for our meal,” Whitlow said, citing an example of how that form of identity theft can be accomplished. The small scanner can be purchased on-line and can be used to swipe a credit card before or after swiping it at the cash register, he explained.

“We’ve found that some people will seek employment at a restaurant so that they can skim because they’ve already been approached ahead of time,” Whitlow said. “They are either sent in to get hired or they are targeted and recruited after the hire by someone posing as a customer. The skimmer isn’t usually the one getting the big dollars. The person receiving the downloaded information is the one using the victim’s information to apply for more credit cards.”

Cases of fraud, including identity theft, scams and forgery in Fayetteville totaled 126 in 2006 then dropped to 93 in 2007, said Harris. The numbers crept back up to 100 cases in 2008. And so far in 2009 detectives have seen 31 cases.

Identity theft is a type of crime that some do not equate with criminal activity, Whitlow said, yet it is the fastest growing type of crime in the United States over the past eight years. And in terms of the workload for investigators, Whitlow said it takes an average of two to three hours to investigate a burglary, compared to 60 hours to investigate a case of identity theft, he said.

Whitlow, Vinson and Harris were updated on identity theft at the recent Identity Fraud Summit in Atlanta sponsored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and LifeLock identity prevention. The main speaker at the conference was Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement Director Wayne Ivey, who was joined by LifeLock owner and East Point native Todd Davis.

Ivey said Georgia now ranks seventh in the United States in identity fraud, behind Arizona, California, Florida. Also in the top seven are New York and Texas. Whitlow and Vinson said that, in Georgia, identity theft complaints increased by 50 percent from 2007 to 2008. And when considered nationally, 65 percent of the cases never get reported in a criminal enterprise expected to top $20 billion this year, Whitlow said.

Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Vernon Keenan gave the opening address, announcing the formation of a new Identity Fraud Task Force staffed by 10 officers.