According to the Internal Revenue Service, employers in the United States “are required to get each employee’s name and Social Security number (SSN) and to enter them on Form W-2 (this requirement also applies to resident and nonresident alien employees).” The Social Security Administration states: “You need an SSN to get a job, collect Social Security benefits, and receive certain government services.”
So how do people without the legal authorization to be or work in the United States and who do not have SSNs get employed?
In many cases, they supply employers with stolen or fraudulent SSNs. “The government estimates that as many as one million undocumented workers are using fraudulent or stolen Social Security numbers,” the New York Times reports. “The numbers are skimmed from data breaches, sold in black markets online for as little as $150 or handed out in border towns by human smugglers.”
A Minnesotan’s story
Identity theft is not a victimless crime. The New York Times recently told the story of one of the victims of these crimes.
Dan Kluver saw the police lights flashing in his rearview mirror late last year and eased his car onto the shoulder, thinking there had been some kind of mistake. He had spent four decades in rural Minnesota without ever getting into trouble. He prided himself on a life built around dependability and routine, working at the same factory where his father once did and spending his weekends coaching baseball and teaching Sunday school. He had never fired a gun, or smoked a cigarette, or missed a payment, or been arrested.
“License and registration, please,” the officer said. Kluver, 42, handed them over and waited while the officer went back to his patrol car. He listened to the church bells that rang every hour and watched sunlight reflect off the grain silos in downtown Olivia, where he knew most of the 2,400 residents, including the officer who was walking back to his car.
“Is everything all right?” Kluver asked.
“It’s strange, but it looks like your license has been suspended,” the officer said. “You’ve got another driver’s license with some issues down in Missouri.”
“What?” Kluver said. “I’ve barely ever been to Missouri. How’s that possible?”
The officer had no answers, but Kluver feared he might know what was happening. Over the years, there had been signs that something wasn’t right — stray letters about wages earned in unfamiliar towns and collection notices for debt that wasn’t his. Kluver had tried to untangle the mess several times by hiring tax specialists and driving to government offices across the state only to run into the same bureaucratic dead ends. But now the problem was bigger than unpaid taxes. Someone was impersonating him, moving through the world as Dan Kluver, building a life in his name with a government-issued ID.
…
The police officer sent Kluver home with a warning, and he sifted through file cabinets with his wife, Kristy, searching for clues about the other Dan Kluver. His Social Security card was safely locked away alongside the birth certificates for their three children. He’d never been robbed or even lost his wallet, but there was his number, printed on a W-2 from a leather factory in a town he’d never visited. He traced 15 years of records and found more tax documents listing unfamiliar jobs, at a cement plant in Kansas, a paper mill in Tennessee, a construction company in Ohio, a cereal factory in Nebraska and a dog food plant in Missouri.
“How do they think you’re getting between all these places?” Kristy asked. “It’s eerie.”
“It’s like I’ve lost all control over who I am,” Kluver said.
Some years the other Dan Kluver had earned more than his own salary at a local sugar beet factory, which pushed the total income under his Social Security number into a higher tax bracket as the debt started to mount. Twice, he’d contacted law enforcement and filed an identity theft report with the federal government, where it landed in a pile along with tens of thousands of similar reports filed each year. He waited for relief while the I.R.S. docked his annual tax returns and garnished a few of his paychecks, costing him thousands. Finally, a few months before their wedding in 2012, Kristy decided to pay off the balance, emptying her savings and sending in a check for $6,000. Their relief lasted until the next tax season, when a new bill arrived — this one for $22,000.
They spent the next decade living with the consequences — annual tax audits, budgets that never added up, whispered arguments after the kids went to bed. Kluver kept calling government numbers and waiting on hold until he eventually resigned himself to a payment plan. He agreed to send the I.R.S. $150 each month, which he’d done more than 35 times. “I can’t keep obsessing over this and getting nowhere,” he told Kristy. “I need to think about something else.”
Kluver’s SSN was being used by an illegal immigrant from Guatemala named Romeo Pérez-Bravo living in St. Joseph, Missouri. Pérez-Bravo was a hard working man. “Like millions of undocumented immigrants,” the New York Times reports, Pérez-Bravo:
…paid federal and state taxes that were automatically deducted from his paycheck. To Perez-Bravo, that meant he was contributing thousands into a Social Security fund from which he would never collect. But to the I.R.S., it looked like one Daniel Kluver was working several jobs, making more than $130,000 and paying a tax rate for someone living just above the poverty line.
The debts accumulated in Olivia, Minn., but the paychecks kept coming in St. Joseph, Mo.
The situation deteriorated even further in the summer of 2022. “[T]he other Dan Kluver had been driving to work in St. Joseph,” the New York Times reports,
…when the serpentine belt broke in his car, causing him to lose control at a red light and collide with a grandfather and his 9-year-old granddaughter as they rode on a motorized tricycle. The girl sustained minor injuries, but the 68-year-old man flew off the bike, broke his pelvis in two places, struck his head and died. The driver stayed on the scene, praying and cooperating with the police as he handed over a license and registration for Dan Kluver. He was cleared of any wrongdoing. The crash was ruled an accident. But the victim’s family had filed a wrongful-death lawsuit — with Kluver listed as the defendant.
“It just keeps getting more unbelievable,” Kluver told Kristy. “I can understand doing whatever you have to do to provide for your kids, but now somebody’s death is attached to my name?”
And all the while, Kluver’s “debts were spiraling, the New York Times reports. “He was still cutting checks to the I.R.S. for $150 each month, and the government said that debt was his to pay until a court determined otherwise.”
Fortunately, Kluver’s encounter with the police last year eventually led to Pérez-Bravo’s arrest in May. This Minnesotan’s fifteen year nightmare is, hopefully, approaching its end.