"You can't say there's no victim," she said. "That Colorado ruling really aggravated me," she said. Courts are mis-applying impersonation laws, and that could really hurt victims. "(The judges) just don't get it."
It is unclear how common SSN-only ID theft is, but the issue is one of many byproducts of the millions of undocumented workers at U.S. companies. Employers are required to obtain right-to-work documents from new hires, including evidence of a valid Social Security number. But illegal aliens commonly buy or copy the numbers, which are rarely checked for accuracy. That means they can work using fake or forged SSNs undetected for years. In a typical year, some 7 million to 10 million workers pay taxes using names and numbers that don't match IRS and Social Security Agency data. Many of these are believed to be illegal immigrants, based on sample studies conducted by the Social Security Administration, but there is no additional published information.
