http://www.chippewa.com/articles/200.../d8ngb8f00.txt

SATURDAY FEBRUARY 24, 2007
Last modified: Saturday, February 24, 2007 4:37 PM CST

Man seeking $25,000 in cash of mistaken identity

MILWAUKEE - A Cudahy man is seeking $25,000 in a case of mistaken identity involving another man who had been deported twice.

Heriberto Tirado, 49, filed a notice of claim Friday against Milwaukee County and its sheriff's department in the matter after spending six days in jail this month.

Authorities have said the other man, who has used a number of aliases, has used Tirado's birth date, address and Social Security number, and has a 1997 conviction for second-degree sexual assault of a child.

John Nienhardt, a special agent in the Milwaukee office for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the other man served two years in a federal prison for re-entering the country after deportation and was sent back to Mexico in June 2004.

Tirado was arrested on four outstanding warrants. Three involved municipal traffic tickets, and the fourth was against the other man for failing to register as a sex offender.

Nienhardt said Tirado didn't have the other man's distinctive tattoos.

"We ran his fingerprints, and the FBI numbers were not the same, so we released him," Nienhardt said.

Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Kim Brooks said her agency could have cleared Tirado earlier if it had the same information. Both the warrant and immigration hold documents included just basic data about the other man, and neither listed his FBI number, she said.

Information from: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, http://www.jsonline.com

A service of the Associated Press(AP)

Copyright © 2007 Chippewa Valley Newspapers

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IDENTITY THEFT, what a beeotch (and rather inconvenient too)