Credit & Money Management
But, Officer, That Isn't Me
A lost wallet could mean more than bogus credit-card bills. You could land in jail.
By Kristin W. Davis
From Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, October 2005
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Curry discovered eight more warrants for her arrest in various California counties, and, more recently, one each in Arizona, Florida and Nevada. Her case is one of the tough ones, says Morgester, because her oft-arrested impostor continues to give Curry's name to law enforcement. "For a while I felt as if it was hopeless," Curry says. "How will she ever be caught? She will never give her real name."
Curry's case underscores the frightening reality of criminal ID theft: The onus is on you to persuade authorities that you're not the alleged offender and then to fix your record. In some cases, the police can change or withdraw a warrant once they know you're not the criminal. Koessel is no longer wanted by Santa Clara County -- in fact, the sheriff's department and the court have no record of his having been detained there. (Humboldt County does have records that show he was held there and transported to Santa Clara.) "When the fingerprints don't match, they do an administrative release," says Jim Siebly, the deputy district attorney in the high-tech crimes unit of the Santa Clara County district attorney's office. "They go in and clear the record of the arrest and make sure it doesn't show up on the victim's criminal history."
But along the way, you will certainly get a few tastes of what it's like to be in trouble with the law. Expect to be fingerprinted and photographed so police can compare your prints and physical traits with those of the perpetrator. If the crime took place in another county or state, you'll likely have to travel there and appear in court.
When you do see a judge, as Curry did, you can formally request that the court clear the record. The procedure differs by state. In Virginia, for instance, the courts expunge the record. In California, a judge finds you factually innocent of the crime. The name on the record should be changed to the name of the impostor, if known, or to John or Jane Doe. But your name may remain as a known alias. As Curry learned, it's critical to come away with a document that unmistakably says you've been cleared of wrongdoing, such as a clearance letter or certificate of release. Then you should carry it at all times.
Get your passport
Even that, however, may not end the turmoil. It would be nearly impossible for Curry to continue to beat back one criminal charge after another. So she's in the process of enrolling in California's Identity Theft Registry, a database of confirmed victims of criminal ID theft. If the police stop someone who is in the registry, he or she can give the police a toll-free number and a password to verify with the California department of justice that he or she is not the person wanted for a crime. The hotline is staffed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Getting into the registry, however, takes persistence because it is not well known or understood, even by the court officials who must help the victims. "The biggest downside of the process is the lack of education of judges, clerks of court and prosecuting attorneys," says Jay Foley, who is co-director of the Identity Theft Resource Center and has helped several victims enroll. "The court system's focus is on one thing: putting the bad guys behind bars."
Once you establish your innocence, you register your fingerprints at a police station and file several documents with the state's department of justice. The registry has been active for four years, but only 40 people are enrolled. A few other states, including Virginia and Ohio, are issuing "identity-theft passports" that victims of both financial and criminal identity theft can carry to show to law-enforcement officials, as necessary.
Although it's easier to get such a passport than to be admitted into California's registry (in Virginia, all you need to show is a police report indicating that you've been a victim of any kind of identity theft), only a handful of the documents have been issued because the programs are rarely publicized. What's more, there's every chance that these documents will be as easy to fake as any other form of ID. "Any document you can carry, eventually the bad guys will counterfeit it, and then what good is it?" asks Foley.
