A saga of identity theft….
Think you’re immune? Listen to a friend from Texas before you blithely assume…. In her own words:
I spent the last month fighting the Health Insurance wars and in the depths of despair over the continued unemployment of my husband. We couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t even get a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart-besides the obvious fact that he is way too young. Well, sit down ladies, for I am about to give you a brief thumbnail sketch of the fallout of the Brady bill; the wonders of technology and internet database access; last, but not least, the incredible ignorance of the rednecks residing in Austin, Travis County, Texas. And forgive me if I offend anyone’s politics, but the redneck currently residing in Washington, but lest you despair, soon to grace us Texans with his return.
The groundwork having been laid—here goes. Sometime around 1978—1979 a felon was traveling through the glorious state of Texas. He liked what he saw and decided to stay for a time. Well this felon just couldn’t help himself. He had to go and do something stupid, pass forged prescriptions. If that wasn’t enough, he had to get busted. That didn’t satisfy his need for fun and adventure. To make it just a little more exciting, he decided to borrow someone else’s name, social security number and date of birth during booking. That name was James Scott Ford. The other identifying information, well that belonged to James Scott Ford also. To add yet more excitement, this felon with the alias of James Scott Ford decided to jump bond and escape from custody.
That is it in summary. Except that this gentleman had 16 prior arrests and/or convictions for various adventures. We discovered in 1985 when Scott tried to get his driver’s license renewed that he had been a victim of criminal identity theft. Fortunately we were in El Paso and I was working for a man there who was very close friends with the DA, so they let Scott go instead of extraditing him to Austin. He submitted to being fingerprinted and of course- so you say? -the prints didn’t match. He got a letter from our Texas Rangers saying they had purged the record of his name and identity.
In 1994 when he went to get a gun license, he discovered that someone else or was it the same felon’s record was again showing up under his name, but this time for two convictions for aggravated burglary. Of course, because all felons have rights, Scott wasn’t allowed to get a copy of any of the details of the information on those entries. Well, he again submitted to fingerprinting. Again – guess what, the sloppy burglar was not the real Scott Ford. But behold, the feds refused to purge that record, merely making a note that the convicted felon and my James Scott Ford had different driver’s license numbers. They so kindly sent him a letter telling him they had verified that it wasn’t him and he could take his letter and get his gun.
Well, then came the tragedy of 9/11 and the increase of criminal background checks for subcontractors & prospective employees. The James Scott Ford never thought anything about it. While he didn’t live the life of a Saint, he had never been arrested, booked, or charged with any misdemeanor or felony. James Scott Ford gave every possible employer carte blanche to check his criminal record. And that is where the story gets interesting.
Scott went to get his handguns out of hock – been unemployed for a year – and he discovered that he couldn’t get his guns back. Why you ask. Well he was now the proud owner of 17 felony arrests and/or convictions that took 8 pages to print out. Wal-Mart obviously didn’t want a convicted felon handing out carts to their elite clientele. As you probably imagine that is not the end of the saga. We are still trying to get someone, anyone in the District Attorney’s office, local police department, government official, or hit man, to help clear Scott’s record.
Stay tuned….
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