“How VAA was Founded” stems from a 10 year long
malicious identity theft problem of a single mother with 3 small children.
The
story includes break-ins, problems with mail, phone, fax lines, and also
computer technology tampering and abuses. There was a business involved
and every account was being tampered with. Every
personal account was being tampered
with.The
problem came to an abrupt end in 1996. So, in 1986 (when it started) was
long before the term “identity theft” was ever even heard of,
or any agency or courtroom knew what to do about it.
We are now looking
for a professional movie producer / book writer packager to put out the
story to help fund our program. There is a 10 year diary.
Please pass this on to professional producers if they’d like the
rights to the story; especially if they do packaging. John Grisham’s
agent made a contact – children
were still small – problem still persisted – fear caused
a rejection.
Now, as a result the nation has a national 501-c-3 to help all of the
other victims
of this crime. Grisham’s contact person has since died. We
hope to see it produced as a true suspense story.
Hopefully sometime soon,
from this very page, we will be able to direct you to a movie or book
with the background story of our organization.
Here’s
a little history:
Our History:
One of you asked if we were a new organization.
That depends on how you choose to look at us! Martha Steimel was
a 10 year victim
of Identity Theft
starting in1986. (Think of that as the collecting info on the crime
time!) Her problem was winding up in 1996 when she traveled (about
penniless)
as a
single
parent to San Francisco with her three children to take every class
offered at a NOVA (National Organization of Victims Assistance)
conference in "How
to set up a 501-c-3", "How to plan for a national presence" "How
to work with victims without further victimizing them" "How
to effectively run a national organization" etc.
At this time
is when several Attorney General's and organization heads were
kind enough to see what she was about,
told her that she had to be in the top three in the nation with
knowledge of this crime - maybe the top because of all she'd had the opportunity
to observe
on a first hand basis and taken in over the past 10 years.
They
sat
down with her and brain-stormed as to how to proceed and her
business plan was put into
place. They stressed that she should financially get back on
her own two feet after losing her own thriving business to the crime
and get
her children all
in place so that she could readily be available for the nonprofit.
They guesstimated that an organization of this magnitude would
take 6 or 7 years to put together. She
went back home and studied and became a stock-broker with that
intent in mind. What was amazing to her at the time – the name of
the crime was not even known yet – but – here was a group
of people knowledgably advising her how to set the whole thing up.
One
of them said that it would be the crime
of the millennium. He saw it in the court rooms already and recognized
a victim of this crime when he saw one – but had no idea how
to help.
That’s
where our president’s ten years in “training” would
come in handy once all was set up and put into place.
1986 – 1996: Our President studied the
crime on a first-hand basis before the name Identity Theft
was even coined a phrase. It was noted that at the pace of it’s
growth: It would
become the Crime of the Millennium.
1997: The organization was named
and the set-up begun.
1998: VAA became incorporated
1999: VAA filed with the IRS
for 501-c-3 status
2000: VAA officially set pen
to paper and drew up a new updated 5 year business plan (This
is posted at the VAA website).
VAA is now right on target in Stage 2: 2nd and 3rd
year.
2001: Received our 501-c-3
designation as a national nonprofit working on a state by
state basis for
the nation to aggressively address the problem and help
the victims in the field of Identity Theft.
We began quietly helping victims. We did not want media
attention yet. Our president,
Martha Steimel at this time left from the brokerage business
(after 6/7 years), her children
were now all away at college and she could now dedicate
full time hours to the needed progression of our organization.
We had a lot of set up work
to do to prepare for the numbers of victims we'd been told
to anticipate. She has totally donated
up to this point all of
her time and toil and physically helped most of the victims
personally.
2002: We have now been helping
victims for 16 months and average 1500 per day between
the website,
phone and e-mail. We are to the point where financially
we need to start asking for the support
of the US to be able to now stand up and put ourselves
out to the nation. We need
to put salaries in place for Martha and for directors in
every state.
A phenomenal company (Virtual-Isle Solutions)
was the first to step up to the bar. They began
working with us on a 400 page website that would become
a focal-point of our organization and greatly help
victims with their problems. They painstakingly put
in another part
to the site called VAARetail. There are over 400 merchants
who have all offered to give a donation
to VAA for every purchase made by anyone going to their
website from VAARetail! This is the first item that
VAA has had with the potential of helping to fund our
national nonprofit help to victims mission. This was totally
donated to our organization and
the first time that someone recognized VAA as a viable
organization worthy of a donation.
VeriSign closely followed suit and is at this time donating
the secure site certificate.
2003: We are ready for the public. We
have 53 volunteers all across the country now helping us. There
are 5 companies working with a professional 501-c-3 development
organization who would
all like to have their name affiliated with VAA. Hopefully
more will follow suit. With the numbers of victims involved
we need as many sponsors as possible at VAA. Two of these
companies are willing to donate office space for VAA in 50
locations across
the US. We expect
to have this national presence within the next few months.
You may look at us
and say "VAA is new". We look at us and say "Look
how our Baby has Grown!!:-)" Because we are just
now looking for funding and we have tried to keep a low key
profile until we are prepared for
the 23,000+ victims we have been told to expect per week people
have not really heard much about us - but - as you can see
- we have been there just steadily
working our hearts out to get to where we are today. As always
- we try to supply you with plenty of info so that you can
easily find enough to answer your questions. We do hope that
you don't
simply state that
we are "new"! That would really discount all of the
work that's been done for years now getting ready for our national
presence.
If you would like more info as to what projects we are working
on at this time and what we have completed thus-far please
let us know.