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Is using a forged Social Security Number -- but your own name -- to obtain employment or buy a car an identity theft crime? Lately, U.S. courts are saying it's not.

The most recent judicial body to take on the issue, the Colorado Supreme Court, ruled last month that a man who used his real name but someone else's Social Security number to obtain a car loan was not guilty of "criminal impersonation," overturning convictions by lower courts.

That follows a ruling last year by the U.S. Supreme Court that a Mexican man who gave a false SSN to get a job at an Illinois steel plant could not be convicted under federal identity theft laws because he did not knowingly use another person's identifying number. The ruling overturned an opinion by a federal appeals court in St. Louis -- and contradicted earlier findings by circuit courts in the Southeast, upper Midwest and the Gulf states.

It hasn’t been a shutout for identity theft prosecutors, however. In July, an Iowa state appeals court came to the opposite conclusion, affirming a lower court decision that a man who used a California woman's SSN to obtain employment was guilty of breaking that state's identity theft law.

Identity theft can take many forms, but one of the most vexing is so-called "SSN-only" ID theft. In it, an imposter uses a victim's SSN --- sometimes purchased from a broker, sometimes nine digits pulled out of thin air -- to obtain credit or to provide necessary documentation to obtain work. In many cases, SSN "borrowing" is successful and the imposter goes undetected for years.



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The issue pits immigration rights advocates -- who say that undocumented workers are fundamentally different from identity criminals trying to steal credit -- against identity theft victim advocates, who think tougher imposter laws are needed.

“An immigrant who uses a false Social Security number to get a job doesn’t intend to harm anyone, and it makes no sense to spend our tax dollars to imprison them for two years," Chuck Roth, litigation director at the National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago, told the New York Times after the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling.

But the Identity Theft Resource Center argues that immigrants who use SSNs to get employment often end up putting the numbers to other uses: obtaining credit cards or car loans that can ultimately be blended in with the victim’s credit, sometimes with disastrous results. The center took particular exception to the Colorado ruling.

"This is a dangerous precedent that has now been established and which could permit abuses of the system designed to protect innocent bystanders from fraud," the center said in a statement. "The Colorado State Supreme Court has implied it is permissible to use an SSN that was not issued to an individual to establish new lines of credit."

native wrote:This:

JMU DJ wrote:

native wrote:This:

Sure, but if they can pluck a SSN# out of thin air, what's stopping them from getting valid forms of ID to show for all of these instances mentioned in your photo?

native wrote:

JMU DJ wrote:

Sure, but if they can pluck a SSN# out of thin air, what's stopping them from getting valid forms of ID to show for all of these instances mentioned in your photo?

Identity theft is not a misdemeanor.

JMU DJ wrote:

native wrote:
Identity theft is not a misdemeanor.

This I know. However, at a random traffic stop, doctors visit, etc... are they checking for to make sure you're not using a fake/stolen SSN#, or are they just looking for valid identification? Yeah, maybe they'll get caught down the line, but at that moment of the presentation of the valid license, will they be able to determine fraudulent behavior?

native wrote:

JMU DJ wrote:

This I know. However, at a random traffic stop, doctors visit, etc... are they checking for to make sure you're not using a fake/stolen SSN#, or are they just looking for valid identification? Yeah, maybe they'll get caught down the line, but at that moment of the presentation of the valid license, will they be able to determine fraudulent behavior?

I am sure that law enforcement has checklists of things to look for on identification cards and behaviors to look for, and that the checklists help them catch some bad guys but not all of them. Are you suggesting that therefore law enforcement should not ask for ID?

What is your point, that law enforcement procedures are not perfect??? Conceded. Next?

We first wrote about the problem of “SSN-only” identity theft five years ago, and estimated that millions of Americans were on the “secret list of identity theft victims” whose SSNs had been misappropriated by an imposter to obtain work or credit.

The IRS often knows when this happens, when the imposter pays taxes. The Social Security Administration knows, too, for the same reason. And the nation's credit bureaus usually know, because the imposter often ends up applying for some form of credit. Plenty of financial institutions also have access to this information.

But no one is telling you. In short, all these government agencies and financial firms don't think you have a right to know.