Just when I thought I knew *everything* there was about CRs: Her ATM card, but her impostor's picture Posted: Monday, February 6 at 12:56 pm CT by Bob Sullivan For years, Margaret Harrison believed she had an impostor. There were signs her Social Security number was living a double life. Four years ago, an unemployment office in West Virginia almost denied her claim, saying she already had a job at a horse farm in Chelan, Wash. Three years ago, a teller at Bank of America looked up her account number by her Social Security number and then asked, â??Is your name Pablo?â? And yet, her credit report was squeaky clean. When she ordered her report, nothing was amiss -- and Pablo remained a mystery. Harrison spent years trying to find out more about him. She called the credit bureaus and asked for more information. She got none. She called Bank of America's fraud department. Same answer. She purchased credit monitoring. Month after month, there was no indication anything was wrong. She even added her picture to her credit card and debit card for extra security. And yet, her impostor was nowhere to be found â??- at least until last week, when Harrison says she ended up face to face with Pablo in her San Diego home. Bank of America had sent Pablo right to her. Harrisonâ??s ATM card had expired and the bank automatically mailed a replacement card to her home. But where Harrisonâ??s security photo was supposed to be -- there was a manâ??s picture. Harrison says the bank later told her that, yes, her new ATM card had been accidentally printed with Pabloâ??s picture on it. "When I saw this guy on my card, I freaked out,â? Harrison said. â??Now that I have this picture on my card, someone's got to be held liable for this. He can't just keep using my Social. Itâ??s not OK." Pablo apparently holds several Bank of America accounts. And yet, Harrison still is not entitled to know what those accounts are. Telling her would violate Pabloâ??s privacy, the bank told her. Betty Reiss, a spokeswoman for Bank of America, said the company was investigating the situation. She declined to provide additional details or answer additional questions, citing customer privacy. Harrison provided an image of her ATM card to MSNBC.com -- she blurred the account numbers, and MSNBC.com blurred the man's face. Her tale may be bizarre, but it may not be as rare as it sounds. Experts say this kind of identity theft, sometimes called SSN-only ID theft, is a growing concern. But it's hard to say how common it is because for consumers like Harrison, it's nearly undetectable. Several people, one number Last week, after catching her breath, Harrison reached for the phone. With her 10-month-old baby in her arms, Harrison then spent four hours on the phone with Bank of America officials. Many told her the story wasn't plausible, that her SSN couldn't be living this secret life. Eventually, she found someone who explained to her, effectively, that these things happen and recommended she call the California state attorney generalâ??s office. That office referred her to the California Department of Privacy Protection. "But, I told (the bank), you knew about this years ago,â? she said. â??You know itâ??s wrong. You just don't do anything about it.â?¦ isnâ??t that kind of like aiding and abetting a crime? You know you have multiple people under the same Social.â? Harrison has since filed a police report in San Diego and registered a complaint with the California privacy office, which is part of the Department of Consumer Protection. â??This really is a doozy,â? said Joanne McNabb, director of the privacy office. She is now working with credit bureau Equifax to resolve the case. But in other tangled cases like Harrison's, disentangling is a challenge. â??We do get a steady stream of these kinds of cases. They are very frustrating to people.â? Can't be spotted in credit reports SSN-only ID theft -- also called synthetic ID fraud -- is often undetectable because of the way credit bureaus store data and release it to consumers. Free credit reports ordered by consumers donâ??t reveal all credit history entries connected to a Social Security number. Only entries that precisely match a consumer's name, Social Security number and other personal information appear on such reports. Accounts opened using the consumer's number but a different name are often omitted, according to the bureaus. That means SSN-only theft, like Harrisonâ??s, can be almost impossible to detect. Itâ??s also impossible to say how common such theft is; the only agencies that would know â??- the credit bureaus and the Social Security Administration -- arenâ??t talking. But an investigation by MSNBC.com last year revealed that millions of workers pay taxes using the wrong Social Security number every year, hinting that the problem may be much wider than generally believed. For Harrison, the frustration began in 2002. Soon after she married her husband, Courtney, a Coast Guard officer, the couple was restationed in West Virginia. Given the meager job market there, she eventually filed for unemployment insurance. That was the first time she heard about Pablo. "Are you working on a horse farm in Chelan, Wash.?" she recalls the unemployment officer asking her. Unemployment agencies would be among the few that would detect SSN-only fraud, as they are charged with preventing someone from collecting unemployment checks while working. They do that by seeing if wages are reported and taxes collected under an SSN. She checked with the credit bureaus and the Internal Revenue Service and found no sign of Pablo. With little else to go on, she chalked it up to a clerical error. But less than a year later, Pablo's life intersected with hers again. She switched banks, signing up with Bank of America's special military financial services. One day, she forgot a deposit slip and asked a clerk to look up her account number. When she told the clerk her Social Security number, the teller pulled up a record of Pabloâ??s credit card. A peek behind the curtain But the teller would share nothing else, once again sending Harrison off to get her credit reports. And again, they were squeaky clean. CONTINUED IN NEXT POST
