Information and Resources about Identity Theft

Criminal and Character Identity Theft happens when someone uses your name or personal identification information when they are being arrested, investigated for a crime or impersonates you in any other situation.  This can happen when the arrested individual does not have any identification on them and poses as you, giving the officer your name and other personal information such as your driver’s license number, date of birth or even your social security number.  Often, it may be a friend or relative who gives your personal information, trying to get out of a jam, but instead causes serious ramifications for you. 

In other cases, people can literally become you, putting their picture on your stolen identification cards or papers, and producing this fraudulent identity for an officer when asked.  Then, when they fail to take care of the charge, you are the one who gets in trouble.

How can this happen?  Well, if someone is arrested for something like a drunk driving or a shoplifting charge, generally they are not going to be held in jail.  They will sign a “promise to appear” at their court date.  But they know they do not have to ever appear because, remember, they have given the officer your name and identification!  When this person fails to show up at the court date, you have “failed to appear” in court, and the judge will issue an arrest warrant for you. 

If it is serious crime, then one day you may be sitting and enjoying your coffee in the privacy of your own home and an officer comes to your door and arrests you for failing to appear in court.  However, if it is a lesser crime, you may never know about this arrest warrant until one day you get stopped for something as simple as speeding.  Instead of a speeding ticket, you get a trip down to the local police office in hand cuffs on your arrest warrant for failing to appear in court.  How are you going to prove that it was not you?

In other cases, your imposter may actually appear in court and plead guilty to the charge.  The conviction is now on your record and in the criminal database system.  This can come back to haunt you if you ever apply for a job or attempt to get a security clearance and your intended employer runs a back ground check on you.  When they find out that you have allegedly been convicted of one or more crimes, you will no longer be considered for the job.  This can go on and on as you apply for job after job,  never knowing why you are not being hired until one day you find out you have several felony convictions.  Again, how are you going to prove that it was not you?

In a different kind of character identity theft, a man had a high level security clearance and a great job based on that security clearance.  The man’s brother, when he was being arrested, gave his successful brother’s name and information and eventually was convicted for the crime.   The successful brother, whose name now had a conviction attached to it, lost his security clearance and therefore his great job.  His character was ruined by a simple act of character identity theft by his very own brother!  In another instance, a woman out of Florida was a award winning teacher in her late 50’s.  She came into school and found out that she was fired because someone using her identity had been convicted of prostitution!

Unfortunately, it is up to you to prove that you were not the one who did the crime.  Because of the connection of local, state and federal criminal data bases, you can spend years in the legal system attempting to prove your innocence.  You may clear up the situation on a local level, but since all the data bases are connected, if you did not clear it out of the state or federal data bases, any update will just put that same information back into the local database and you have to start all over.  Besides years, this can take thousands of dollars and many hours of attorney time to finally clear your name.  It is best to have a plan in place prior to any of this happening.