I agree. Identity theft is just a particular method of fraud with a name that mitigates the responsibility of the institutions that enabled the fraudsters.
I don't know if it is one one of those terms that was invented by one of those PR agencies that invented terms like "climate change" to mitigate the visceral impact of "global warming."[1] But it certainly has ended up as a term that obfuscates the responsibility of banks to stop treating public information like passwords.