While it can be a giant pain in the you know what to have your credit card stolen, one of the worst things that can happen in terms of identity theft is to have your Social Security number stolen.  There have been a rash of thefts of Social Security numbers in the Orlando area and one young girl has had the misfortune of having her number used by three different individuals for the purpose of working illegally in our country.  Her number is being used to secure a job as a dishwasher, a paver-installer and a construction worker and she hasn’t even graduated from high school yet.  Because a social security number is required in obtaining a job or a financial account or credit, the thieves could also open lines of credit using her number and ruin her credit history before she’s even old enough to start building it.  The thieves can also claim fraudulent worker’s compensation using her information.  According to local law enforcement, as law agencies are cracking down on companies that hire illegal workers, they are discovering a frighteningly high number of cases of false document sales.  They think the number of illegal workers using this girl’s social security number might be in the hundreds.  Investigators were first put onto the case when they realized over a hundred people were using the very same Social Security number as a criminal they were tracing in an unrelated incident.  They have already convicted over 25 illegal workers for using that stolen number.  The number of defendants is expected to rise by more than 10 in the coming months.  They have no idea at this time who stole the number, or who the ringleader is in this black market false documents ring. According to the Federal Trade Commission, in 2009, over 20,000 complaints of identity theft were claimed in the state of Florida alone.

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