Identity Theft of Foster Child

By Rally on 6-27-2011 in Aging out of foster care, California, How could you? Hall of Shame, Identity Theft

This will be included in our How Could You? Hall of Shame, our archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption.

This is now our third case of identity theft of foster kids. This time the person stealing the Social Security Number is the birthmother.

“Four years after Sacramento County Child Protective Services removed Katrina Haywood from her mother’s abusive grip, the woman still has managed to stand in the way of her daughter entering college, finding a job or paying for the roof over her head.

Haywood, 18, has spent the past two months starting to clean up a mess that foster care workers say she couldn’t have prevented.

Eight entities, including Bank of America and Pacific Gas & Electric, want a total of $6,000 from Haywood. She says her birth mother started opening lines of credit using subtly crafted aliases and Haywood’s Social Security number. Since the bills weren’t paid, the credit history associated with Haywood’s Social Security number is filled with accounts in poor standing. ”

This article estimates that in California for one to five out of every ten children “Social Security numbers and birthdays, easily accessible to birth parents, foster parents, siblings, social workers and courts, were hijacked so others could get quick cash from banks, keep electricity and water flowing, avoid criminal conviction or even save on taxes and medical costs.”

“Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation five years ago that required social workers to retrieve free credit reports for foster children shortly after their sixteenth birthdays.

To save the state’s social services department a few hundred thousand dollars each year, legislators have delayed the mandate until at least July 2013.”

Assemblywoman “Bonilla is carrying a bill only a Senate vote away from the governor’s desk that would make the eventual system more efficient. The state’s social services department could submit one batch request to credit agencies each quarter instead of more than 100 agencies filing individually.”

“At the urging of their county supervisors, Los Angeles foster care officials recently ran credit checks on 2,110 children. About 100 of them had marks on their report, from library fines to outstanding medical fees to $400,000 home loans. All told, 230 different credit accounts had to be erased. A few of them may have been legitimate.”