Attain Social Secuirity Number From a Recently Deceased Family Member
When Loved Ones Die, Their Identity Is There for the Taking
Identity thieves steal Social Security numbers from the Principal Death List.
May eight, 2012 -- Alexis Adverse was 4 years old when she died last year from a brain tumor. As her parents grieved their girl's loss, someone else paid attending to the details of her death also.
An identity thief was easily able to become Alexis' personal data after she died. Her parents had no clue until they went to file their taxes. Then, to their astonishment, they learned that someone else had already filed a tax render, using Alexis' Social Security number and claiming her as a dependent.
The Agins presently learned they were i of many. "Within an hour of learning that my daughter's Social Security number had been compromised and stolen," said Jonathan Adverse, "no fewer than 14 other parents whose children passed away due to cancer contacted the states and advised usa that their children'southward Social Security numbers too had been stolen."
Americans are told to jealously guard their Social Security numbers, but afterward one dies, the government goes public with that coveted information. Information technology is all included on a Principal Death List.
"This is a database of more than lxxx million records that the Social Security Assistants maintains of all the deaths in the country. And that information is actually publicly bachelor," said John Breyault at the National Consumers League. "Consumers tin go online, on any number of sites, and get full proper noun, date of birth and full Social Security number, which we phone call the holy trinity of personally identifiable information."
The list is used past banks, credit agencies and others to try to prevent identity theft after someone dies. However, a court case in the 1970s forced the Social Security Administration to make the listing public, under Liberty of Information Human action laws. "Unfortunately, dead people don't have any privacy rights," said Breyault, "That information, one time you're dead, is publicly bachelor information."
"Inside 30 seconds of learning that my daughter'south Social Security number had been stolen, I went online and found her Social Security number," Agin told ABC News. "All the information is there."
Breyault of the National Consumer League showed ABC News but how easy it was. He sat down with me at a computer and pulled up a wealth of information on my married man, who died of cancer concluding year. My taxation refund for this year has now been held up because someone else filed a return, apparently using my husband'south Social Security number. The Internal Revenue Service said information technology might be a simple fault by the other taxpayer, non a case of identity fraud. The bureau, however, can't yet tell me for certain as it works to unravel the situation.
Today on Capitol Colina, the House Ways and Means' Subcommittees on Social Security and Identity Theft held a hearing on this growing problem.
In his testimony, Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, told lawmakers that while processing tax returns in 2011, the IRS managed to flag and stop 940,000 returns that appeared to involve identity theft. The refunds requested on those returns totaled $6.5 billion.
George told lawmakers, "There is much more than fraud that it [the IRS] does non notice." The inspector general "identified approximately ane.5 1000000 additional undetected tax returns with potentially fraudulent taxation refunds totaling in backlog of $5.2 billion," said George. Those refunds were paid out. "If non addressed, we guess the IRS could issue approximately $26 billion in fraudulent revenue enhancement refunds resulting from identity theft over the next 5 years," he testified.
The IRS told ABC News that it believes that five-yr estimate is "far as well high. The approximate was based on figures from 2010, before the IRS instituted major changes in the way information technology handles identity theft cases," the agency said. "Our increased compliance and prevention efforts mean we are stopping more than refund fraud than always before."
The Social Security Assistants had recently taken steps to cut dorsum on the Principal Death Listing information information technology releases publicly, leaving off the decedent'due south state and ZIP code. And the IRS said information technology has installed identity theft screening filters on its calculator systems to flag suspicious returns. "Fighting identity theft volition exist an ongoing battle for the IRS and 1 we cannot afford to permit upward on," said Steven Miller, an IRS deputy commissioner, in written testimony.
Late last year, the IRS established a special taxpayer protection unit to aid handle identity theft cases. Simply George testified that those trying to file their 2011 taxes found it difficult to go through to the unit. "The unit received more than than 86,000 calls during the 2012 filing season, but has only been able to reply about 21,000," said George. And according to his testimony, the average phone look time for taxpayers was almost one 60 minutes.
Taxpayers caught in this mess are forced to prove their loved one'south identity to the IRS. Agin said he had to provide evidence to show the IRS that his late daughter was his child. Some cases have taken upward to a year to resolve.
Congress is considering a number of bills that would limit access to the Master Decease Listing. For Agin and the hundreds of thousands of other taxpayers who accept been victims of this fraud, it can't come soon enough. "It'southward bad plenty losing your child to any type of disease, cancer in whatsoever manner," said Agin, "simply then have somebody steal their identify, the last remaining vestige of your child, information technology's horrible."
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/US/OTUS/loved-die-identity-taking/story?id=16304478
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