It is a good idea to call ahead if you can for office hours and clarification on acceptable documents to take with you. Some metropolitan areas, such as New York City, Las Vegas, Orlando, and Phoenix may require you to appear in person. First-time applicants age twelve or older must apply in person regardless of the location. Even if you appear in person, plan to wait up to twelve weeks before the card is issued, as the SSA needs processing time to verify the documents you have provided.
Question #70: Should I automatically request a new Social Security number for my child after discovering identity theft?
When adults become victims of identity theft, some of their first phone calls are to credit card companies, banks, and insurance providers. The inevitable request is to cancel the card and issue the victim another one. This is a natural reaction, but one you should reconsider in most cases concerning child identity theft, and specifically, in the case of the Social Security card.
Social Security numbers are assigned as unique personal identifying numbers. They are never issued to more than one person. The ultimate goal of the Social Security number is to record income earned during your lifetime so that benefits can be paid at the retirement eligibility age. Benefits can also be paid on disability claims.
Your goal in reporting abuse to the SSA should be to encourage accurate earnings reporting. If your child has fraudulent earnings on their Social Security benefits and earnings statement, the SSA will assist you with clearing up child identity theft issues and subtracting the fraudulent earnings.
As a general rule, the SSA will ask you the details of your child identity theft to try to figure out if your case is bad enough to require the issuance of a new number. If you have been the victim of repeated use and reuse, you may be a candidate for a new card. An example of repeated use would be a Social Security number that was obtained by an undocumented worker who used the number repeatedly to obtain employment, credit cards, vehicles, and/or a mortgage. If this same child’s Social Security number was then resold to other undocumented workers, then the SSA might agree that a new number needs to be issued.
So why won’t the SSA give you another number if your child has been victimized once by identity theft? There are several reasons for the cautious stance the SSA has taken with reissuing Social Security numbers. The first reason has to do with the fact that they have had this policy for many years. We have previously discussed that, under the old serialization system, there were concerns about the maximum numbers available before the system of number assignments ran out.
The policies of reissuance of Social Security numbers are the same for both adults and children. The next reissue concern is the impact of affecting multiple personal tracking entities such as the IRS, health and life insurance companies, medical and dental records, school records, savings bonds, and driving records. An important note to make is that the SSA does not make notification to other federal agencies when a child identity theft occurs.
Once a person is recognized and tracked in databases, ensuring full and complete change is challenging. A good example of this is that credit reporting agencies will not combine records issued under different Social Security numbers. The SSA will not void a Social Security number either. What will occur is that the original number will remain assigned to you, with a new number given to you and cross-referenced to the old number. The reason for this policy is that income earned in the years prior to the theft needs to be tracked continuously until benefits are paid.
The SSA will change a child’s number if they find out that your child’s number was issued in error and that another child or adult already had that same number legitimately issued to them previously. The SSA will also entertain severe abuse cases, life endangerment, or harassment cases. Lastly, the SSA will review cases where the person claims that they have religious or cultural objections to a number assigned, or to the digits within a series of assigned numbers.
Question #71: If I work in a medical office, what can I do to protect our patients?
Those who work in the medical profession are key in prevention of both identity theft and child identity theft. They work at a location that must have your most personal information to care for you properly. Unfortunately, while they may be great at medical care, seldom are they experts at child identity theft or identity theft. It is okay—law enforcement and this book can help.
If you work for a doctor’s office, hospital, dentist’s office, orthodontist, elder care facility, emergency clinic, or as a school nurse, you can directly impact the safety of your patients. The first thing you can do is build on your knowledge of child identity theft. Use the information in this book as a guide to make your medical office a harder target for identity thieves.
A good place to start is a review of the security of patient files. Does your office keep them in view of the visitors who come to the front window? If it does, I would ask why. From a law enforcement officer’s point of view, keeping a patient file visible at the receptionist’s window is like parking a vehicle, locked or unlocked, with a wallet or purse visible in the front seat. Neither is a good idea.
Two things occur; the first is the temptation of having a gold mine of information within sight of an identity thief when he or she walks up to the window. This situation is commonly referred to as an opportunist crime. Opportunistic criminals may or may not take the initiative to commit a crime; however, if the opportunity presents itself, it may be too hard to turn down.
The second occurrence is the confirmation of the exact location of all information. Remember, a child identity thief or identity thief will not break into your medical office to steal drugs. Not all break-ins are discovered in identity theft. Thieves committing this crime will try to get in and steal or copy patient data files, and then neatly replace your data information before leaving. If you do not suspect a break-in, then your patients will never be notified.
Child identity thieves may also try employment with your office or employment with a service provider to your office. Do you have your office cleaned during office hours or does an employee remain to watch the cleaning if done after hours? Does your office have a policy on the accountability of copied patient files? Are you allowed to take “work” home?
Another weakness you can work on is computer information. Do any of your computer screens face patients or visitors? If so, it encourages “shoulder surfing,” which is a person being “nosy” by looking over an office worker’s shoulder at the computer screen and reading the information. If it is their own record, it may only contain doctor’s notes that the employee may not realize the patient will see, but if it is someone else’s record, such as a child, it gives pertinent child identity theft information.
Does your office encourage passwords that are complex, unrelated to easy personal information, and include non-alphanumeric characters? Do you change system passwords when an employee leaves your company? Do you screen persons that work on your computers when you have problems? These questions are critical, as your computers contain very personal patient data that, when compromised, can cause significant damage to patients.
A great resource for you is your police department crime prevention officer. Contact your state, local, or sheriff’s office and ask to speak with a crime prevention specialist, crime prevention officer, or crime prevention deputy. They can provide you with a crime prevention assessment of the physical security of your building, security survey of your office, and system tips on enhancing your technology security. Take advantage of this resource. In most all cases it will be free and enhance your relationship with law enforcement, providing you with improved preventive information.
Question #72: I work in the medical profession. Help me understand medical identity theft versus child identity theft and how I can make a difference.
A very serious problem that plagues child identity theft victims is child medical identity theft. Medical identity theft, committed against children, is the act of someone stealing a child’s personal
information to obtain medical care under the child’s stolen name. Medical identity theft also occurs to obtain needed or desired drugs, or to submit fake billings to insurance companies. Medical identity theft can disrupt a child’s life, put their health at risk, and damage their credit rating.
Many dangers exist with this crime, but most center on the mixing of the original patient’s information with that of the person using the information. In other words, if I steal your child’s information from your family doctor and then visit your local hospital for a medical procedure, the hospital treatment records now have the wrong person’s treatment information inserted as your child’s.
The secondary concern is insurance fraud. Most child medical identity theft occurs because someone wants medical coverage for the thief’s child or relative. Unlike obtaining credit, medical identity theft can only be used for as long as it takes the bills to get to the insurer and insurance client. These parameters tend to make these crimes single-use crimes.
Single-use crimes are those the thief does not intend to use repetitively; they need health care for a specific issue, such as a medical surgical procedure or illness. Children’s insurance information may be stolen by anyone with access to that information. Holders of that type of information usually include school workers, medical office workers, day care providers, sports league employees, foster care system employees, friends, or relatives. If you work for a medical office, dental office, or hospital, would you be able to recognize the signs of child medical identity theft? Recognition starts with the receptionist at any location, but must continue throughout all levels of care. Children in need of medical care rarely know their own insurance information. Parents or guardians know whether they have insurance or not and know if the information they have to present for care is stolen.
Patients who visit on a frequent or semifrequent basis will probably be more well-known in the care provider’s office. This is why someone attempting child medical identity theft will tend to visit as a new patient or show up at an immediate care facility or hospital emergency room. A child identity thief does not want you to know either them or their children, because the information being presented will not match the truth. They may go to great lengths, including traveling to cities far away from the child they stole the information from.
So as medical team members, how do you recognize medical identity theft? For medical workers such as a doctor’s office or hospital, recognition begins with the first person who receives information and continues with each caretaker thereafter. Each member looks for inconsistencies. Each person on the medical team listens for parents who try to explain away information that does not match records. For example, if your hospital record has the child’s blood type as O positive but the child seeking care has A negative, this is a red flag.
Red flags will be explained away as mistakes by clerical or medical staff. Mixed blood types will be easy to spot, but different addresses are accepted. Inconsistencies may be cleared up through policies and creativity. When a child is treated, do you require parental identification or just verbal approval and a signature? Help your office understand child identity theft and the different ways it is committed.
Discuss with your staff what systems you have in place to detect inconsistencies. If you have a patient who shows up with inconsistent patient data, how will you deal with it? If your billing reveals inconsistencies, do you follow up on it? If your medical chart information shows inconsistencies, do you address it with the appropriate nurse or doctor? How often do you see things that puzzle you as a nurse or doctor? If an X-ray in your file says that the child patient had a broken bone the last time in, but the child and parent claim they never had an injury, who was the thief—this child or the last one who visited under the same name? The only way to know is to ask questions. When in doubt, insist on further proper identification.
If you have concerns that arise during a patient’s visit, contact the police. Because a great deal of medical child identity theft is single usage, police contact at the time of the visit may be the only chance at discovering the real identity of the person attempting to obtain fraudulent care. Your ability to detect this type of fraud may save the real patient’s life by preventing a change in the records. Consider, for a moment, the effect of penicillin administered to a child with this allergy; death may be the outcome. Take medical child identity theft seriously.
Question #73: If my child has become a victim of medical identity theft, how do I correct the medical records?
Finding out that your child has been victimized is never easy. Parents feel shock, disbelief, anger, and resentment. Many things complicate the cleanup of child identity theft devastation. Part of the problem with theft of a child’s medical information is that you will probably never know if the one location that you find out about was the only incident or if there were more.
Identity thieves usually commit medical identity theft for treatments under coverage of your child’s insurance policy. There are, however, cases of child identity theft where your child’s identity was stolen for employment and the thief does not need your insurance, just your child’s name. When this occurs, the identity may be stolen for the adult thief who needs legalization, or the thief’s child who needs the same.
Regardless of the type of child identity theft, or the motive behind the theft, once it has occurred, your child’s personal information becomes tangled with another person’s. The person to whom your child is linked may have different allergic reactions, be on different medications, have a different blood type, different illnesses, or will have had a completely different medical history. It is rare that two siblings are treated the same medically throughout life, let alone two completely different strangers.
Once you discover your child’s medical identity theft, it is imperative that you dedicate time to clearing up any known damage. In addition to cleaning up what has been done, you must ensure that all medical care received in the future is done with the correct information and treatment record. You will have to deal with this hard reality, because the child identity thief may have visited any treatment facility you may visit, and you must ensure that your child’s diagnosis relies only upon your child’s current situation, information, and past medical history.
If your family has been victimized, contact the police. Ask them to take a report and investigate the crime. Take the time to report the crime on the FTC’s website, www.ftc.gov. Once at the website, under the tab “Consumers,” click on “Filing a Complaint with the FTC.” Having a police report and proof from the FTC will assist you in clearing up child medical identity theft.
Once you have notified the police and filed the FTC report, contact your insurance provider. They can provide information on submitted claims and track future health care submissions. The insurance company’s fraud department can also assist the police with the investigation by providing them with information on where the thieves visited, what ailments they claimed, what addresses they reported, phone numbers they reported, and who treated the person submitting themselves as your child.
You should contact one of the three major credit reporting agencies to advise them that your child has been victimized. Request that you need to place a ninety-day credit alert on your child’s file. Next you need to contact your child’s physician and your child’s school. You will probably be unaware of where the data breach occurred, so these entities need to be notified that your child has been victimized and that they need to strengthen the security of their file information.
If you receive bills in relation to the medical identity theft, contact the hospital, doctor, or dentist that sent you the bill. Advise the company from whom you received the bill of the victimization and of the name of the law enforcement officer who is working your child’s case. If you receive phone calls from a debt collector, explain the situation and provide a copy of the police report. If you receive civil documents in the mail or from a law enforcement officer stating you owe sums of mone
y, contact an attorney or, if your family is a military family, visit your judge advocate general’s office for assistance.
A child will have to be aware he or she is a victim of medical identity theft and possibly deal with it for many years. Knowing this, you may want to consider counseling for your family. There are many types of victimization and many ways to deal with the damage. A professional counselor or therapist can provide your family positive tools to deal with a bad situation, and ensure that each of you has the best chance at emerging with good mental health.
Here are some tips to help you prevent medical identity theft in the future:
View medical bills for services you did not receive.
Review insurance statements for double billings for the same service.
Scrutinize the dates on medical bills for discrepancies.
View your credit report for bills owed at locations you did not visit.
5
Coping with the Emotional Fallout from Child Identity Theft
This section focuses on the emotional toll identity theft can take on the victim and his or her family and offers suggestions for dealing with it.
Question #74: How do I explain identity theft to my child?
You have taken the first step by picking up this book in an effort to educate yourself on this destructive crime. Your challenge will be to educate yourself and your family on how to successfully survive in a financial world where there are no absolute protections. Key to surviving successfully is accepting the belief that your child’s identity is of value and needs protection and theft prevention.
Take what you absorb and translate it into a discussion your children will understand. This means translating the legal terms and phrases that law enforcement uses to describe something into simple verbiage that your child can understand. Don’t panic; you are the best there is at communicating with your child. Go slowly, use basic terms, and encourage them to come back to you with questions.
Child Identity Theft Page 17