When someone else is using your social security number for employment purposes, it presents a difficult situation to resolve. While the answer to how to stop this from continuing is not clear, there are some things you can do.

You can contact the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service to notify them of the fraud, as you want to avoid tax liability on this imposter’s wages. Also, the imposter could potentially open credit using your SSN, which would cause you additional problems. So you can contact the consumer reporting agencies to report fraud and ask them to put a fraud alert on your consumer file. Every employer is also required to verify the identity of an employee using a form I-9, which is governed by the Dept. of Homeland Security, formerly the INS, so you could notify the Dept. of Homeland Security. Also, the Federal Trade Commission accepts complaints of identity theft, as they keep a database and cross-reference complaints for potential action. You can attempt to file a police report of the fraud, but the local police department may not accept the report, as many are reluctant to do so if there doesn’t appear to be an economic loss associated with the matter.

Providing the identity of the employers where the fraudster worked and to these agencies may help get some interest going on to investigate to help you find out the identity of the person using the SSN.

The FTC has a very good guide on what to do when your identity has been stolen. Anyone that is victimized by identity theft should review that site and follow its recommendations.

For more information on what you can do, visit our website page on Identity Theft at http://www.celcwi.com/page33.html.