Free shredding day set

To help protect their friends and neighbors against identity theft, members of Grand Coulee Dam Rotary Club are joining with Coulee Dam Federal Credit Union, North Cascades Bank and Shred-It mobile document destruction to once again offer a “Free Community Shred Day.”

The event will take place from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, April 23, in the parking lot of Strate Funeral Home, 329 E. Grand Coulee Ave., Grand Coulee, Washington.

All are invited to bring their old files and records for destruction onsite in Shred-It’s state-of-the art truck. Gifts of non-perishable foods and financial contributions will be accepted and donated to the community food bank. Printed materials on the prevention of identity theft will also be available.

Local families and businesses have brought 20,000-plus pounds of records to be pulverized during the Rotary club’s three previous free shred events.

In 2014, identity theft cases accounted for over 30 percent of all fraud cases in Washington state, according to statistics and published in http://www.247wallstreet.com and USA Today. Washington placed second highest in the USA after Florida in number of identity theft complaints per 100,000 of population.

In 2014 alone, 36,127 complaints were filed in Washington, with an average payment of $2,704 per complaint, resulting in losses of nearly $100 million.