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ploitation of loopholes
in laws and regulations at every level of government.
In 1986, the U.S. Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), a key element of which was sanctions against employers who hired illegal aliens. IRCA had the unintended consequence of accelerating the proliferation of counterfeit, stolen and illegally obtained Social Security cards and driver’s licenses.
Undocumented immigrants and those with visas that don’t permit employment have devised multiple ways to obtain a Social Security card fraudulently—they can: •
invent a SSN;
•
steal or borrow a Social Security card; •
buy a counterfeit Social Security card; •
obtain a valid Social Security card by using false evidentiary documents, such as counterfeit passports and INS papers; •
obtain a valid Social Security card by using a fraudulently acquired U.S. birth certificate; or •
fraudulently obtain a valid replacement Social Security card by stealing a person’s identity.
If illegal aliens invent SSNs, steal or borrow authentic cards or buy counterfeit ones, the SSA will not catch on without the aid of employers. But few employers seem inclined to cooperate.
The SSA’s Employee Verification Service (EVS) is a mechanism for employers to match an individual’s
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name and SSN with SSA records. There were 6.5
million U.S. employers in fiscal year 2000. Only 6,000
employers were registered users, and of those, only 211 used EVS. Employers complain that the feedback is not timely.
However a number of employers find the system to
be too helpful, exposing the fact that their employees are in the country illegally or holding visas that
do not permit them to work.
SSA statistics show three industries (agriculture, food and beverage and services) account for almost one-half of all wage items in SSA’s Earnings Suspense File (ESF). The ESF is the Agency’s record of annual wage reports submitted by employers for which employee names and SSNs fail to match the SSA’s records. Of these industries, agriculture is the largest contributor, representing about 17 percent of all ESF items.
SSA has noted that about 55 percent of the items in the ESF have: 1) no name; 2) no name and no SSN; or 3) an unissued SSN. The remainder of the items in the ESF generally relates to a
mismatch between
the name and SSN
.
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The federal prosecution of Ousmane Sow and Aboubakar Doumbia for Social Security fraud illustrates how easily Social Security cards are obtained by fraud and what a large role this fraud plays in illegal immigration.
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Sow and Doumbia were caught at Reagan National Airport in transit from New York to Miami. They were traveling on tickets paid for with stolen credit cards and were found to be carrying a dozen foreign passports and two dozen
stolen immigration forms
.
Both men were charged with immigration fraud and pled guilty prior to trial. Interestingly, both had fraudulent Virginia identification cards even though they lived in New York.
One of the two men agreed to cooperate with the government and revealed the purpose of their trip to Miami. He informed investigators that he and his accomplice were part of a
West African criminal syndicate
(he used the term crew) based in New York City. This syndicate specialized in the fraudulent procurement of Social Security cards and, to a lesser extent, the fraudulent procurement of Virginia driver’s licenses and identification cards. According to the cooperating defendant, members of the syndicate repeatedly traveled from New York to major cities in the United States on tickets paid for with stolen credit cards. The purpose of the trips was to apply for Social Security cards by fraud at the SSA offices in each city. At each office, the members of the syndicate would apply for a card using a passport and an INS
form.
The members of the syndicate
altered the passports
by substituting their own photographs so that they could apply in person for a Social Security card in the name of one of the syndicate clients (to whom the passport actually belonged). They further placed doctored INS forms in the clients’ passports to make it appear that they, the applicants, were lawfully in the United States and had the right to work. In fact, their
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clients were illegal immigrants in New York and New Jersey who paid the syndicate between $700 and $1,500 for a Social Security card.
According to the cooperating defendant, members
of the syndicate had traveled to all of the major
cities in the United States, often more than once,
and obtained well over 1,000 fraudulent Social Security cards.
In July 2002, Social Security Administration Deputy Commissioner James B. Lockhart III told a U.S. Senate subcommittee that a new
electronic immigration verification process
was starting that month.
The lack of such a system had been a major criticism after 9/11, when officials initially thought terrorists had legally obtained Social Security numbers. The SSA could not verify visa status or other immigration documents for all non-citizens because no system was available to do so quickly.
The SSA was also implementing a system that assigned Social Security numbers to new immigrants when the State Department approves an immigrant visa at a foreign service post and the INS authorizes entry. The SSA wanted to make the numbers “less accessible to those with criminal intent as well as prevent individuals from using false or stolen birth records or immigration documents to obtain” them.
The federal prosecution of a Virginia notary public named Jennifer Wrenn illustrates how criminals pro-1 1 1
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duce false or
fictitious driver’s licenses
for illegal immigrants.
Wrenn had offices in Falls Church and Manassas Park, Virginia, from which she ostensibly conducted the activities of her real estate business, Jenni Wrenn Re-alty. An investigation by the Virginia DMV, the INS
and the IRS revealed, however, that the true work at both offices was the sale of fraudulent forms to immigrants seeking to obtain Virginia driver’s licenses and identification cards.
Immigrants were coming to Wrenn through a network of paid drivers and middlemen with whom Wrenn worked. For a fee of between $500 and $1,000, these drivers and middlemen would bring immigrants from New Jersey, Connecticut, New York and other states to Wrenn offices. Once there, Wrenn and her staff would complete fraudulent forms for the immigrants. These fraudulent forms bore all the necessary signatures and affirmations—and falsely stated that the applicants were residents of Virginia. At the height of her business, Wrenn was providing fraudulent forms to over 1,000 immigrants a month.
Wrenn was arrested in February 2001, and subsequently convicted at trial of seven counts of conspiracy, identification document fraud, encouraging illegal immigration and money laundering. In addition, the government arrested and prosecuted a dozen other individuals who worked with her or for her on charges of
identification document fraud
. These individuals included a lawyer, notaries, drivers and other middlemen.
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T E R R O R I S M
Seven of the 9/11 hijackers used illegally obtained identification to
sneak past airport security
. The freedom with which these terrorists moved has been a considerable embarrassment to the U.S. government, with most of the criticism directed at the INS.
But the attacks of 9/11 also exposed cracks in the security system at the Social Security Administration.
The relative ease with which the ID thieves-turned-terrorists manipulated the system called for tighter screenings and other security precautions.
When federal law enforcement agencies asked the SSA for assistance shortly after the attacks, time-consum-ing efforts ate up valuable hours as agents worked to obtain necessary authorization to see the files of suspects. Although the requests were expedited, it revealed a
weakness in a system
that prohibited the automatic disclosure of certain information to the Department of Justice or FBI in connection with a terrorist investigation.
September 11th, 2001 focused government attention
on the need to tighten security at the SSA and streamline cooperation among federal agencies to detect
fraud and ferret it out.
Terrorists steal credit cards, passports and Social Security numbers, and use them to pay for their operations and create false identities, Dennis Lormel, chief of the FBI’s financial crimes unit, told a Senate subcommittee in July 2002.
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Lormel said 14 pending FBI terrorism investigations involved some form of identity theft.
“The methods used to finance terrorism range from the highly sophisticated to the most basic,” Lormel said. He said an al-Qaida terrorist cell that was broken up in Madrid, Spain, used stolen credit cards in sales scams and for small purchases that did not require other identification. The group also used
fake
passports to open bank accounts
, which were used to send money to and from countries such as Paki-stan and Afghanistan.
Lormel told the senators that blank passports were stolen in Brussels, Belgium and were “finding their way into terrorist circles.”
The 9/11 hijackers were able to open 35 U.S. bank
accounts without having legitimate SSNs and
opened some of the accounts with fabricated SSNs
that were never checked or questioned by bank officials. The banks involved approved several account
applications in which the hijackers simply filled in
random numbers in spaces reserved for applicants’
SSNs.
With no scrutiny from the financial institutions or government regulators, the hijackers were able to move hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Middle East into the United States through a
maze of bank
accounts
, beginning more than a year before their attacks.
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The hijackers relied most heavily on 14 accounts at Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks, moving $325,000
through accounts opened in Florida and taken out in the names of several of the hijackers.
Lormel went on to describe the steps that the FBI was taking to prevent other terrorists from having such success with ID theft within the U.S.: One involves targeting fraud schemes being committed by loosely organized groups to conduct criminal activity with a nexus to terrorist financing. The FBI has identified a number of such groups made up of members of varying ethnic backgrounds [that] are engaged in widespread fraud activity. Members of these groups may not themselves be terrorists, but proceeds from their criminal fraud schemes have directly or indirectly been used to fund terrorist activity and/or terrorist groups.
Another initiative has been the development of a multi-phase data mining project that seeks to identify potential terrorist-related individuals through Social Security number misusage analysis.
According to Lormel, the threat is made more serious by the fact that terrorists have become
experts
at identity theft and SSN fraud
to enable them to obtain cover employment and access to secure locations. There is virtually no means of obtaining identification that has not at some level been exploited by these groups, he said.
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The data mining that Lormel mentioned has become a central part of the U.S. government’s efforts to thwart ID thieves with terrorist connections. In earlier congressional testimony, Michael Chertoff—an Assistant U.S. Attorney General in charge of criminal prosecutions—had described the Justice Department’s data mining activities. His description of data mining is a good one:
We are using computers to analyze information obtained in the course of criminal investigations, to uncover patterns of behavior that, before the advent of such efficient technology, would have eluded us. Through what has come to be called “data mining” and predictive technology, we seek to identify other potential terrorists and terrorism financing networks. In our search for terrorists and terrorist cells, we are employing technology that was previously utilized primarily by the business community.
On May 2, 2002, the U.S. Attorney General announced a
nationwide sweep
of identity theft cases, in which 73 federal criminal prosecutions were brought against 135 individuals in 24 districts. In addition, to strengthen federal ID theft laws, the Attorney General announced that the Justice Department would seek legislation to enhance criminal penalties in identity theft-related cases.
Seven of the 9/11 hijackers—none of whom actually lived in the Commonwealth—had obtained Virginia driver’s licenses by submitting false proof of Virginia residency.
In August 2002, law enforcement officials announced that a man whose name was used to wire money to
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accused 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui a year earlier was an American who appeared to have been a victim of identity theft.
Moussaoui’s indictment charged that an accomplice, using the name Ahad Sabet, had wired $14,000 to Moussaoui in the United States, where he was pursuing flight training lessons. The allegation was one of the few connections in the indictment between Moussaoui and associates of the 9/11 hijackers.