Woman confronts identity thief at Koch Foods
BY ROBERT MOORE, Tribune Staff Writer

Jefferson County resident Virginia Ridley recently had a face-to-face encounter that few people will ever experience.

The person she met said her name was Virginia Ridley. Ridley’s namesake also represented that she had the same date of birth and Social Security number.

That’s where the similarities end.

The Virginia Ridley who lives in Jefferson County is a blonde, 5-foot-tall Anglo-American who speaks perfect English.

The other woman, who gave a Morristown address, has dark hair and is 5 inches taller. She also is Hispanic, and said she spoke no English.

The not-so-chance encounter occurred in the human resources office of the Koch Foods, a Morristown chicken-processing plant, Ridley said. Ridley went there with the sole purpose of meeting the woman who had assumed her identity on Feb. 25.

That’s the day she received a letter from the IRS indicating she owed almost $9,000 in federal income taxes and penalties on $48,000 she earned there from 2005 through 2007.

Ridley, who was seven months pregnant with her second child, and her husband, Claude, steadfastly maintain she never worked there.

When Ridley arrived, the "other" Virginia Ridley was working on the deboning line. Koch Foods human resources personnel summoned the Hispanic woman to the office, the real Ridley said.

Ridley showed the Hispanic woman her driver’s license.

"She dropped her head, and said she was sorry through the translator," Ridley said. "I wasn’t really sure what to think. I would like to know how it was accomplished, and if it’s still going to be a problem in the future."

Koch Foods personnel records provided to Ridley indicate the Hispanic woman was fired that day for providing false information. The records also indicate the woman’s real name is Patricia Flores.

The Morristown Police Department followed up on the identity-theft report, according to Detective Capt. Randall Noe.

When officers went to the address the Hispanic woman gave, she was gone, according to Noe, who isn’t optimistic the alleged identity thief will ever be caught.

The Citizen Tribune was unable to reach David Wilds, Koch Foods complex manager, for comment. He said earlier that the company has cooperated fully with all ID-theft investigations.

Wilds has said that federal laws prohibit prospective employers from questioning on ethnic group of job applicants more vigorously than others about the authenticity of their documentation.

The company executive also said that Koch Foods has begun participating in the "E-Verify" program, which allows employers to verify Social Security numbers submitted by applicants.

Noe says it’s unclear to him whether Koch Foods verifies only the Social Security numbers given by new job applicants or if it checks existing employees.

Ridley says late February wasn’t the first time she and the IRS had communicated about tax bills accumulated at Koch Foods. She says approximately 18 months ago, she received a tax bill for 2005 and 2006.

An IRS employee said he would check into the matter, and get back with her, according to Ridley. When she heard nothing for months, she assumed identity-theft problem had been solved.

Not so. And now, Ridley says, the Social Security Administration is proposing a cruelly ironic solution that would permanently rob her of her identity.

"The Social Security office told me that I might have to change my name," she said. "I don’t want to do that. I think I should not have to change my name over something I did not do."

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