Theft of Children's Identities a Growing Problem ? The Boddie Law ...

Courtesy Huffington Post.

In this week?s Tuesday?s Legal Tidbit, we discussed the illegality of putting utilities in your children?s names when you can?t get them placed in our own due to past credit issues. But, it seems that identity fraud committed by family members, especially against children is a growing problem. In fact, according to ID Analytics, an estimated 500,000 children have had their identities stolen by a parent.

Below is an excerpt from an article on the issue from HuffingtonPost.com, which published a series called Burdened Beginnings which focuses on child identity theft:

A Family Secret

Parents use their children?s Social Security numbers for a variety of reasons. Some use them to get jobs because?they have felony convictions on their records.?Others use them to apply for credit cards and utilities because their own credit is tarnished.

Last April, Maryland resident Jimmy Louis Craighead, 40, was convicted of stealing the identities of his three children ? ages 6, 4 and 2.?He told a judge?he and his wife were not able to get credit in their own names, so they used their children?s names to get money for food, fuel and other necessities, according to the?Carroll County Times.

?They have maxed out their ability to get credit, so they borrow their child?s thinking, ?Oh, it?s okay. I?ll pay all the bills so by the time they turn 18, they?ll have great credit,?? Linda Foley, co-founder of ID Theft Info Source and an expert on child identity theft,?said at a conference in July. ?Well, they haven?t unlearned the bad behaviors that got them in debt in the first place, so at 18, the child ends up in debt.?

That debt can take years to remove from a credit report. When Chip St. Clair was 15, his parents stole his identity to take out nearly $50,000 in student loans, utilities, apartment leases and car loans over the course of three years, he said. He didn?t find out until 1998, when he was 22 and his father was charged with escaping from an Indiana state prison in the 1970s.

He also learned that his father, who went by the name David St. Clair, was actually Michael Dean Grant, a convicted child killer. Grant had used Chip?s Social Security number to create a new identity.

After his father?s arrest in 1998, Chip?s mother wrote a letter for her son to give to his creditors. Written in cursive on stationery with a brown stuffed bear, the letter began ?To Whom It May Concern: I am writing this letter in hopes it will straighten out my son?s credit and financial problems.?

It continued: ?Chip is trying to regroup and make something of himself and all this from the past is holding him back. ? He should not be held accountable for the sins of his father. ? Please try to have compassion for Chip?s situation and help him clear his good name.?

Now 36 and a resident of Rochester, Mich., St. Clair said he has spent the last decade trying to remove fraudulent charges from his credit report while paying high interest rates on loans because of his poor credit. He has still not been able to erase student loans that his parents took out in his name, he said. In October, he tried to open a utility account, but was told he had an outstanding balance of $500 from an address where his parents lived 20 years ago.

?Your credit is your lifeline to society,? St. Clair told The Huffington Post. ?When it?s stolen from you, it creates so many problems in your life. It still haunts me to this day.?

Read the rest of the story here:

As you can see, using a child?s identity to get credit you can?t get is not only theft, but can damage that child?s credit for years into their adulthood, limiting their options and opportunities early in life and perhaps causing a lifetime of problems.

If you are having financial challenges and require assistance, please refer to our latest Tuesday?s Legal Tidbit for resources here in Georgia and seek out similar resources from your own state. If you have credit issues you need to resolve to get credit in our own name, please contact a consumer counseling credit agency like American Consumer Counseling Credit for help.

(c) 2012.?The Boddie Law Firm. All rights reserved. All other copyrights reserved by their owners. The information contained in this post is subject to our?Disclaimer. Comments to this blog are moderated and subject to editing, removal or deletion at the discretion of the owner.

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Source: http://theboddielawgroup.com/?p=552

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