Identity Theft, Identity Tagging, and My Evil Twin
"Lack of money is the root of all evil." - George Bernard Shaw
I have an Evil Twin. I've never met him in person. His foul trail of bad debts and deadbeat behavior has dogged me since the first semester of my freshman year at college. I had gone to the financial aid office to learn what grants I'd been awarded. The man behind the counter listed off a string of grants and loans. For a moment, I thought I'd won the lottery. But...loans? I didn't apply for any loans. Didn't want any loans. "Oh, so sorry. Wrong Gregory Engel. Those are for Gregory L Engel."
Since then...
I've been sued by the State of Alaska for child support. I don't have any children.
I've been sued by a local hospital for failure to pay for gall bladder surgery. Apparently, they botched the surgery so completely I was left with my gall bladder still in place! Imagine the malpractice lawsuit I could have filed just to make a point. Pain and emotional distress! Such pain and emotional distress! I was working with an attorney at the time to resolve a different matter and asked him to resolve this for me. Whatever he could extract from them in terms of compensation, he could keep. All I wanted was a letter of apology and a clear statement that this was not my debt to pay. I got what I wanted.
I was dogged for years about a failure to pay for some sort of a mechanics correspondence course.
Plenty of debt collectors chasing overdue credit card and automobile payments.
Clearly, GLE is (or was) a deadbeat. It's been quiet for a few years on this front, so I'd like to think he's cleaned up his act. But I'm dealing with another similar issue of creditors hassling me because of someone who was a roommate with me FORTY YEARS AGO!
Thing of it is, I'm not particularly miffed at GLE or my past roommate. Deadbeats are gonna deadbeat. My issue is with the creditors to whom the losers owe money. My lesson from this was that a leading strategy of creditors is to tag and hassle just about anyone who has the same or similar name as the person who owes them money. It's then up to those of us with the misfortune to have a name in common with the loser to clear our name and credit reports. It's us, the responsible people who don't have a reason to hide, who end up doing the legwork for the creditors and their collectors.
This is different from straight-up identity theft fraud. Criminals intent on stealing someone's identity usually work to avoid detection for as long as possible. What people like my Evil Twin initiate is lazy bully behavior from their creditors. Given the amount of data about customers available to any large business, this type of thing is much easier to prevent. I'd dearly love a bit of legislation that provides compensation to us, the responsible people, when creditors get it wrong or are lazy.
I mentioned I've never met Evil Twin in person (and I never want to.) But he reached out to me about 25 years ago - around the time I was being sued by the State of Alaska and a local hospital - and left me a voice message. It's a classic and it reveals just how much of a tree stump Evil Twin is. (I learned later that the callback number Evil Twin left was his girlfriend's. Censored to protect the innocent!) Please allow me to introduce Evil Twin:
“I have birth certificates and everything.” Hahahahahahahahaha! It’s been 25 years and that still cracks me up!
If you have any questions, need anything clarified, or have something else on your mind, please email me directly.
Photo by Fares Hamouche on Unsplash