Mike Hoss / Eyewitness News
METAIRIE, La. -- After having a baby, getting a Social Security number is one of the first duties a new parent performs, but then the card is likely filed away, with relatively little thought.
But that Social Security number has become an emerging market for identity thieves who are targeting children.
“It’s horrible, and the problem is that people don't know what to do,” said Tim Marsh of the FBI.
The FBI recently gave a presentation on child identity theft in Metairie. Isabel Berrigan attended, but it was too late for her, as her two sons had already had their identities stolen.
“It went on for a year, maybe a year and a half, before we found out that that was done,” she said. “And then he went to Best Buy and tried to charge something and open an account, and he couldn't.”
But she's actually one of the lucky ones. She found out somewhat quickly that often a child's identity is stolen shortly after birth, and since most people don't run credit histories on their kids, they don't find out for years.
“Not until they try to get their first credit card, their first car,” Marsh said. “That’s not part of their father or mother, not until they have issues with credit is when they're gonna know that they have credit problems.”
One credit card application came in the mail for a Metairie resident. It's addressed to his 9-year-old son, and that’s a red flag.
“That’s a problem,” Marsh said. “You need to look into that. Why did that come?”
How big a problem is it? The FBI says 1 percent of adults have an issue with identity theft. When it comes to identity theft for kids, that number jumps to 10 percent, and again it goes on and on, undetected.
Marsh said the thieves are going after kids because their Social Security numbers are clean with no credit history, and because breaking into a school's computer system or that of a pediatrician’s office to get the number is relatively easy.
According to ID Analytics, a company that tracks child identity theft, 500,000 kids a year will have their numbers stolen, some sold on the black market, often times to illegal immigrants looking to work in the country.
But that's only half of the story. 500,000 kids have their numbers pilfered by their own parents looking to escape a bad credit history.
We spoke via Skype to Dr. Stephen Coggeshall of ID Analytics in San Diego. He said New Orleans is one of the worst spots when it comes to identity manipulation.
“I see a person, his name is Daniel, in New Orleans and he's using 67 different Social Security numbers and he's applying for credit cards and cell phones and financial products,” Coggeshall said. “He's using eight different dates of birth and four different names.”
Berrigan said the only bad thing you can do when it comes to your child’s credit is to do nothing at all.
“But you have to be vigilant, because this could have happened to anybody, more so with young kids, I think, because they don't monitor their accounts. They don't look at the information.”
They might not, but others certainly are.
Identity theft experts say be careful who has or who gets your kids Social Security number, and shred any un-needed document that has it.
You can run a credit history on your kids just like you would on yourself, but it comes with a cost.
And there are companies that offer ID monitoring services that look specifically for misuse.
