Earlier this month, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal aggravated
identity theft statute may not be used against many undocumented workers who
use false social security numbers to get jobs.

The case was Flores-Figueroa v. United States.   The statutory provision in
question, 18 U.S.C. sec. 1028A(a)(1), states that:

Whoever knowingly transfers, possesses, or uses, without lawful
authority, a means of identification of another person shall be sentenced
to a term of imprisonment of 2 years.

Flores-Figueroa claimed he bought the forged documents but did not know the
social security number he was using belonged to anyone.

The court decided that the defendant did in fact have to know that the means
of identification belonged to another person in order to be subject to the mandatory 2-year sentence.

Related articles:

Supreme Court: Justices limit use of identity theft law against illegal immigrant workers

Ruling could affect 12 identity theft cases

A child’s Social Security number is an easy target for identity thieves.  It offers a clean slate to establish credit or employment and the crime can go undetected for years most often being discovered after the child reaches 18 and attempts to establish his own credit history.

Debix customers Tanya and Gary Allen signed their son up for Debix and learned five different people in Georgia were using their 17 year old’s social security number to obtain credit, utilities and legal employment status.  The thieves racked up over $58,000 in bad debt.  Fortunately, Debix was able to identify and stop the thieves as well as restore the child’s credit before it becomes and issue for him.

Dr. Gingrass received a call from a creditor regarding an inquiry someone made to an existing Chase business account. Mary did not think much of it at the time, but she did cancel the card.
The thief was not deterred by the failed attempt. Over a 20 day period, 10 more attempts were made to open new accounts or takeover existing accounts.

Debix stopped the thief from opening new accounts at Barnes and Noble, Sprint and Macy’s. the thief even attempted to change the contact information in Dr. Gingrass’s credit file at Equifax. The Debix system was able to override this and keep the fraud alerts and personal information in tact.
Dr. Gingrass is now diligent about shredding her documents, not leaving mail in the mailbox, and not using the same password for every account. Dr. Gingrass was so pleased with the Debix system and service provided that she took the additional step of enrolling her husband and children.

Tim Grace, a retired West Deutsche Bank employee who now deals in antiques, became a Debix customer in 2008 after a breach with the State of Connecticut. At that time he was in the midst of dealing with the aftermath from a situation that began a year earlier when a thief used his identity to file a bogus tax return and receive a refund. Tim became aware of the situation when, after electronically filing his 2006 federal tax forms, he received an electronic message that his tax form had already been filed.

Tim says, “It was lucky that I e-filed because I knew right away there was a duplicate and thought the problem would be cleared quickly. It’s going on two years now and the situation with the IRS is still unresolved, it’s completely frustrating.” As required by the IRS, he mailed notarized copies of proof of identity and fraud affidavits along with his tax forms to the IRS. Before his papers and legitimate tax form was processed, the IRS sent the thief the $5,000.00 refund he claimed based on the phony EZ Form he filed using the identity of Tim Grace. When the IRS received Tim’s tax forms they linked it back to the fraudulent form and sent an additional $85,000.00 plus interest to the thief’s address in a different state. The IRS did not owe the real Tim Grace a refund.

Tim hoped the situation was behind him when he filed his 2007 taxes. Astonishingly, the same thing happened again. The thief beat him to it, filing on January 18 using an EZ Form, falsified W2 forms and claiming a $5,000.00 refund. Tim says “the IRS must have received my tax forms with the identity theft documentation from last year and said ‘we’ve already got his form,’ and thrown mine in the rubbish bin.” Once again he sent proof of identity and the Identity Theft Affidavit along with his 2007 tax form.

This past year, Tim started receiving notices stating he owed $124.00 in taxes, which was not the case. Each time he spoke with the IRS to resolve the situation, he spoke to a different person who was not familiar with his case. “I was treated with suspicion and had to tell the story each time only to end the call with the IRS promising to have someone return my call and of course, they never did.”

The IRS may be flooded with calls like Tim’s, according to National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson complaints are up 644% in three years, “Identity theft is the number one consumer complaint in the United States, far outpacing all others.” In a written statement to the Senate Committee on Finance in 2008, Olson said, “Regardless of the motive, identity theft results in serious consequences for the innocent taxpayer” consequences include “the delay or denial of refunds, the assessment of tax debts resulting from income reflected on the fraudulent filer’s return, and the requirement for victims to prove their identity to the IRS year after year.”

Tim says “it’s ironic that in cases where a taxpayer claims to be a victim of identity theft, the IRS places a “freeze” on the refund however, there is no “freeze” placed on penalties they say I owe.”

Some of the recommendations Olson made in her report are the same Tim Grace says would make life a lot easier for him and others dealing with tax identity theft.

Among the recommendations, Olson says an IRS form needs to be created for taxpayers to file if they’ve been victimized by identity theft.  She also urged IRS agents to notify all filers who they believe have a compromised Social Security number that their identity might have been stolen.  “Maybe the thief would stop” after receiving such a notice, she said, adding that true victims would be alerted to the need to contact the IRS and other authorities. This Tim says is important, he says if he had filed by mail he might not have known for a year that there was a problem.

Olson also said in her congressional report that the IRS recently created an electronic marker to flag compromised Social Security numbers in a system that would alert employees agency wide. The move is aimed at sparing identity-theft victims like Tim from having to prove their claim year after year.

Some of Olson’s recommendations have been implemented, and others are being assessed as the IRS works to improve its victim assistance. It may be too little, too late for Tim. He has been assigned an advocate, something he says everyone who thinks they are a victim should request immediately, and is hoping at last he will be able to reclaim his identity.

According to the FBI, Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in the country. In the most recent survey, 9.9 million individuals over 18 were victims with losses totaling over $52 billion in a single year.   This is one of the reasons the Los Angeles Police Protective League will provide Debix Identity Protection to approximately 8,000 officers.  LAPPL Director, Sergeant John R. Mumma says the League wants to secure its members with the best solution on the market, “the LAPPL selected Debix as its Identity Theft Protection provider after a lengthy review of businesses in the industry. The product Debix provides is an outstanding fit for the needs of Los Angeles Police Officers and their families. “

The League hopes to prevent officers from experiences like the one Officer Adriana Sanchez went through when someone in another state destroyed her good credit.  “I was completely blindsided, she had stolen my identity and ran up $70,000 in bad debt.  Everything was compromised from my SSN to my date of birth.  I felt completely violated.”  Officer Sanchez invested her time and energy to eventually bring the thief to justice.  To restore her identity, she spent hours on the phone with multiple creditors, sending pages of notarized documents to prove she was not the criminal.  Officer Sanchez said the experience was “such a nightmare” she wished Debix had been available to her then to track down the thief and work with creditors to repair damage to her credit.

LAPPL President sergeant Paul Weber is aware of other officers who have been identity theft victims and knows it is easy to see how it can happen when your information is so accessible but he was caught off guard when he discovered someone had stolen his daughter’s identity.  Weber says when she turned 18 and tried to open a checking account, she was denied.  “Someone in another city had already opened a Bank of America checking account with her name and SSN.  She had to prove she was the legitimate owner of her identity. It was a real eye opener for me.  I didn’t think anyone would use my daughter’s identity. It is so easy and in the case of a child, can go undetected for years.”

During a trial program offered to a small group of Los Angels Police Officers, 27 children were signed up and Debix found 2 of the children had someone using their Social Security Number.  Officer Jensen, who trains new recruits for the Los Angeles Police Department, signed up her three young sons.  Debix found records indicating someone had been using one of her son’s Social Security Number from the time he was an infant.  Debix investigators were able to identify the person using the number, alert the credit bureaus and clean the child’s credit file.   Officer Jensen is “beyond excited” that the situation was discovered and corrected.  “This was the easiest procedure I have had to go through.  Being a police officer, I know the run around everyone gets but this was so painless on my side.  I told everyone you need to get this – it is so nice.”

Debix Identity Protection requires banks and creditors to take extra precautions before opening new accounts including sending an instant authorization phone call requesting the consumer’s permission.  Debix is the only solution available today that utilizes an electronic Identity Protection NetworkTM that protects individuals during the critical moment of an attack and immediately connects customers to an investigator to pursue the criminal while the case is hot.  Debix also provides insurance and identity restoration services to protect against other attacks including employment, medical and criminal identity theft.

Jeffrey Curtsinger enrolled his 14-year-old son in the Debix Identity Protection Network after being offered the product when his son’s information had been breached. After a thorough database search, Debix investigators found that a man in the Los Angeles area has used this child’s SSN since 1997.

The thief established good credit for the first 10 years and was able to finance a $605,000.00 home in Sherman Oaks, CA through a first and second mortgage with Litton and Citi Banks. He also used the boy’s SSN to open several credit accounts.

Last August the home loans went into default and the bank foreclosed. Additionally, a Chase credit account with $2329.00 in unpaid charges has gone into collections.

Police reports and fraud affidavits have been filed. Debix OnCall Investigator, Katie Hall, identified the suspect and discovered there is no record of him existing before 1997 with any other SSN. Credit records indicate he was born around 1966. Katie is working with local law enforcement to apprehend and question the suspect.

Good morning everyone. I’m very excited to announce that we have launched a webcast with the FBI on Child Identity Theft. We have a great group of presenters including, Ramona Warner, Internet Crime Specialist and SSA Leslie D. Hoppey, Supervisory Special Agent both from the FBI’s Cyber Crime Division. On the Debix side we have Katie Hall, OnCall Investigator and Julie Fergerson our VP of Emerging Technologies. They’ll talk about child identity theft and what you can do to help prevent it. I’ve included a brief video to give you an idea of what to expect in the full version.

This video is one from the vaults. I was pretty jazzed when I found out that we put this together at the request of the Secret Service. Enjoy!

There’s a common misconception that identity contamination (someone else using your SSN under a different name) is a victimless crime. Unfortunately, as Lindsey discovered, that is not true. As I mentioned earlier, suffering from identity contamination can be just as painful and difficult to recover from as traditional identity theft.

Below is a snippet from a conversation I recently had with Julie Fergerson, our VP of Emerging Technologies which highlights the problem.

“As I talk about this problem with other Moms, the first question is always, ‘what does it mean that their kid is a victim of identity theft?’ It means the child will not be able to use his credit when he needs it for things as important as college loans, first apartments or even a first job. As part of my research, I met Lindsey, a college student at Texas State, who is living this problem. When she applied for her first internship competing against 400 other candidates, she was thrilled when she got the job and received the company welcome gift. Unfortunately, a few weeks later, she received a letter rescinding her job offer – she was told she was not hireable because someone else was using her social security number. After what she calls ‘a full time job’ of working to clear her name for six months, she was able to restore her identity and get the job.”

Debix has also identified several other outstanding issues with Lindsey’s identity and is getting them cleared up as you read this.

To hear it in Lindsey’s own words, check out the above video.

I’m very excited to be finally able to talk about the Child Identity Theft Study. This research, performed by Javelin, analyzed 500 children (ages 17 and under) who were enrolled in Debix between mid-July and mid-August. We were amazed to discover that 26 kids had credit reports where none of them should have one at all. That’s 5% or in other worlds, if you walk into your average elementary school, that’s one kid in every single classroom, whom already has their credit messed up in some way. Other key findings include:

• The study discovered 5% of the children had one or more credit reports using their social security number (SSN), and 54% of those children were victims of identity theft.

• Among those 5%, the children had on average $12,779 in fraudulent or wrongly assigned debt.

• While the study found that children were more likely to find problems in their credit histories as they aged, an astonishing 12% of those with problems were age 5 and under.

• A handful of cases stand out as especially severe: one child had seven identities listed under his SSN, with several thousand dollars in medical bills, apartment rentals, and credit accounts in collections; another child’s SSN was associated with over $325,000 in debt.

• One in four victims in the study has bills or lines of credit in collections or foreclosure, while almost two‐thirds of these children had fake or wrong names listed under their SSN.

• 42% of those children with erroneous credit reports only had credit files at one credit bureau, meaning their fraud could have gone unnoticed without checking all three.

Kids are a great target for identity theft, because their credit is a clean slate and the younger you target them, the longer you have before the act will be discovered.  As a result, the corresponding amount of fraud that is committed prior to discover can be significantly higher for children than adults. This of course begs the question, what can you do to protect your children’s identities? At bare minimum we recommend that you do the following:

• Keep your child’s social security number private
• Shred sensitive documents before discarding
• Beware of what sensitive information you (or your children) share
• Keep physical and electronic documents locked up

We’d also love it if you’d buy our child identity protection service ($20 per year) that finds and fixes these problems just as it did for the children in this study.  Debix is the only child product that continuously monitors the three credit bureaus and ChoicePoint, along with utilities and other public databases for abuse of your children’s identities. Most importantly we also provide the same insurance and restoration services that we do for adults so that should something happen you and your children are fully protected.

See how it compares to the competition.