With 18 years of policing behind him, Mills spoke of common tactics used by fraudsters to steal identities for financial gain.

"What is the most common form of ID theft? Stealing from letter boxes," he said. "In some Asian areas of Melbourne documents are being stolen and used for people smuggling."

Mills highlighted one case of a convicted identity thief who had the "audacity" to use a prison photo on one of his nine fake licences.

"Some people are pretty good at what they do [and he] had the ability to take over someone's ID to raid superannuation funds, which is another emerging trend," he said, adding that offender actually got better at it when caught for a second time.

On credit card fraud Mills said it's easy to test how seriously a vendor treats security by deliberately writing a false signature when making a purchase.