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Home Front: Culture Wars
Stealing Your Child's Credit
2006-12-12
A new level of despicable ingenuity.
The crime began with a phone call: Jason's ex-wife, dialing in to check on the couple's 5-year-old son, who was home with his father when the phone rang. Oddly, the boy's name flashed across the caller ID window, but Jason thought nothing of it.

Mistake.

Today, three years later, the Las Vegas father recognizes this call as his first taste of something truly dismal: His ex-wife, who had filed for bankruptcy, used their child's name and social security number to buy a cell phone. Then she stopped paying the bill.

Jason found out when his son turned 6 and received a credit agency collection notice for $344.

As identity theft goes, the scam was particularly nefarious - abusing the name of your own child. Unfortunately, children are increasingly becoming victims of this kind of identity theft.
Posted by:.com

#8  As recently as the mid-70s this wouldn't have been a problem, as minors couldn't enter into a contract, which credit would entail. I'm not too sure what happened to this principle. Perhaps one of our legal experts could explain.
Posted by: Fred   2006-12-12 13:12  

#7  Â“But for a combination of reasons, the actual number of child victims is likely to be much higher…”

You know…like…some Illegal Aliens are less “Undocumented” then others.
Posted by: DepotGuy   2006-12-12 11:36  

#6  The CCC's should have to pay for the restoration.

Which are basically the banks. And the banks don't care cause they simply pass any bad accounts on to all the other card holders. Notice that when the inflation hit during the last Carter years the banks quite lending till the states altered their usury laws. Back then rates were capped under 10 percent. They got the state legislatures to remove all caps rather than float a percentage above prime. So interest rates went to 21 percent. Inflation was throttled during the Reagan years and prime dropped to under 6 percent but credit card interest rates grudgingly came down from 21 to 18, then 18 to 15, and over a decade latter from 15 to 12. It’s a gold mine built on the backs of everyone else without the banks carrying any real liability for issuing cards and credit to students, kids, or dogs. You start the tighten up the system and watch them scream that it is discriminatory against the ‘poor’ and ‘minorities who make up a disproportion of the poor’. No, it’s a threat to their rape of the serfs. The new indentured population. No one is entitled to credit. Its earned. Way past time for interest to be capped by the prime by which these same banks get their float from the Federal Reserve and past time that they can dump their bad practices upon the backs of others. Time for the banks profit to take a big hit for improper lending practices. Make it hurt and they’ll pay attention.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2006-12-12 11:27  

#5  ...This has actually been a rising problem for a few years now, and I'm frankly surprised it hasn't gotten more publicity. In my former job at a local loanshark finance company, we were seeing this start to be a serious matter among those of our customers who were getting disability and SSI checks for minor children.

Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski   2006-12-12 09:52  

#4  I had my computer stolen and it had all my families SSN's on it. I called to have my credit blocked and and it was no problem for me and my wife. My kids were another story. Since they were minors they could not, or would not, block their credit!!!! This will only get worse until the laws are change to protect our kids.
Posted by: 49 Pan   2006-12-12 08:08  

#3  To put this on a broader level, isn't the very nature of western european retirement systems amounting to stealing your child's credit?
Or, say, for France, the constant borrowing of money to simply keep the budget afloat (debt being 67% or 130¨of the GNP, according on how you count)?
Posted by: anonymous5089   2006-12-12 06:01  

#2  This is just so evil. These people really need to be punished in a physical way, it's the only thing that will "cure" them, the fear that the physical pain will be revisited on them.
Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom   2006-12-12 04:30  

#1  Secure identities as in a national identity card would kill this nonsense stone dead.
Posted by: phil_b   2006-12-12 04:27  

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