Two Men. One Identity. They Both Paid the Price.

[Igel]

2. I'd say it's also the fault of the person committing fraud

and making another person's life hell. Usually because they want to have a better life ... Maybe out of ignorance, maybe not, they're willing to sacrifice others for their own good.

(Yes, that's put in about the starkest terms. But identity theft is like that--and that's what they're committing. And it makes those not assumed to be vulnerable absolutely vulnerable--that includes you and me and 300 million other people.)

The IRS back in the '80s had a nifty program that I really liked. I worked for a small non-profit and co-kept the books and such. Anyway, for a while we got reports from the IRS to help clean up their error ridden database. One push was to get all the official names matched up with the SSN. So one guy, "Matthew Scott Johnson" only went by "Scott Johnson"--to the point that if somebody asked for "Matthew Johnson" we had no idea who they were talking about. Fortunately, he keeps everything legal that needs to be legal.

The other was to make sure that (1) all your jobs that provided earned income subject to payroll taxes was included. And, (2), that only your jobs were included. Because identity theft.