--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted on Sun, May. 27, 2007



Tax season brings rise in ID theft cases

By Kara Lopp
The Journal Gazette

In 2003, Jose Zamora was making about $20,000 a year working at a panty hose factory in Clarksville, Ark.

But a letter Zamora received two years later from the Internal Revenue Service painted a different picture. Zamora, the letter said, made $41,615 that year working at least eight jobs ranging from poultry farming to truck driving – all near Warsaw, nearly 800 miles away in northeast Indiana – and, the IRS informed him, he had never paid taxes for that income.

The victim of identity theft at age 19, Zamora – who is married with a 3-year-old daughter – is just waking up from the nightmare. A then-23-year-old illegal immigrant living in Warsaw claimed to be Zamora and used Zamora’s Social Security number to keep him employed, buy a truck, clothes and incur more than $1,400 in cell phone bills.

Local police aren’t strangers to this type of story.

As local residents wait for their tax returns and some wrestle with the IRS over extensions and annual filings, some police agencies are noting a rise in their identity theft caseloads.

Police in areas like Fort Wayne, Ligonier and Warsaw say the majority of identity thefts are committed by illegal immigrants, who use a lifted Social Security number to get a job. These criminals can be hard to catch, they say, because they tend to move frequently.

Even police agencies that haven’t been touched with this type of identity theft yet are betting it won’t stay away much longer.

Identity theft occurs when a person steals another’s personal information – like a Social Security number, credit card or bank account number – and uses it for gain. The information can be gleaned from online records or taken from stolen wallets or by rummaging through trash for bills or other financial paperwork.

Zamora’s letter from the IRS came in June 2005 and was followed by another letter from the agency seven months later claiming he owed more money in unpaid taxes. Phone calls from bill collectors started coming soon after.

In the summer of 2003, Zamora lost his wallet, which contained his Social Security card and birth certificate. He had just returned from a trip to Texas and crossed the border into Mexico, he said. He filed a police report and forgot about it, he said, until he received the first IRS letter.

Warsaw police were able to trace the identity theft to Floriberto Meyo, who had traded in his mother’s car for a 2000 Chevrolet Tahoe he bought using Zamora’s identity. In March 2006, Meyo was charged with identity deception in Kosciusko County. He pleaded guilty in October 2006 and was sentenced to 1 1/2 years in prison, with the entire sentence suspended, to be served on probation.

Meyo, who still lives in the Warsaw area, did not return phone calls seeking comment. By Friday his listed phone number had been disconnected.

Police could forward his information to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security asking that Meyo be deported, Warsaw Police Detective Steve Adang said. They haven’t because Meyo likely wouldn’t be deported because he has children who were born in America, Adang said.

Warsaw police typically receive at least two reports of identity theft a month, usually one of those deals with a Social Security number being stolen to gain employment, Adang said. The department recently received at least two calls from Texas residents claiming someone in Warsaw had stolen their identity.

Feeling like he’s lost years of his life as he wrestled with creditors and federal agencies to clear his name, Zamora – who now has a new Social Security number – said the ordeal has been hard on his family.

When he received the first IRS letter, Zamora and his wife, Maria, were getting ready to buy a house and had just bought a car, Zamora said by phone from his Clarksville, Ark., home. He made packets of information about the theft, keeping extra copies handy to send to banks and creditors who wanted to collect on debt Meyo had created for him. Zamora even had to get a letter from his job at the panty hose factory attesting that he worked there.

“It was kind of embarrassing when you go to apply for something and they tell you no,â€