Social Security Cards

Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies who were looking for narcotics suspects were tipped off to a counterfeiting operation when a man near their search accidentally dropped a blank Social Security card, officials said Sunday. The deputies were pursuing a narcotics investigation at 10 p.m. Saturday in the 5000 block of Makee Avenue in the unincorporated Florence district, Deputy Kathryn Nielsen said.

Dear Liz: A large safe containing our passports, Social Security cards, birth certificates, checks and credit cards was stolen from our home several days ago. We notified our bank and credit card companies. Is there an advantage to requesting new Social Security numbers? If we do this, would it affect our credit in any way? Answer: New Social Security numbers wouldn't necessarily protect you from identity theft and could create additional complications. Thieves might still be able to use your old numbers to establish new accounts, and those fraudulent accounts could show up in your credit reports.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan was 15 when he got his Social Security card in 1943. He promptly lost it. "It didn't look like anything worth keeping," the New York senator recalled. "It did not suggest its importance." Moynihan, who chairs the Senate subcommittee on Social Security, for more than a decade has been crusading to replace the paper card with something more impressive and tamper-resistant.

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the government cannot use mismatched Social Security data to root out illegal immigrants from the workforce, declaring that such enforcement actions would do "irreparable harm to innocent workers and employers." In a major defeat for the Bush administration, U.S. District Judge Charles R.

A Social Security Administration employee and a U.S. Customs inspector have pleaded guilty in federal court to using fake Social Security cards to obtain a $208,050 mortgage loan. Janice Washington, 38, a service representative with the Social Security Administration office in Watts, and her husband, Darryl, , 39, an inspector for the U.S. Customs Service, admitted in U.S. District Court that in 1991 they both submitted fraudulent applications for Social Security numbers, said Assistant U.S.

Three men were arrested on suspicion of manufacturing and selling false documents Thursday after an undercover police officer bought a phony Social Security card at an indoor Van Nuys swap meet, authorities said. A detective with Community Effort to Combat Auto Theft, a multi-agency task force, placed an order for a Social Security card at a booth at the Valley Downtown Swap Meet, near the intersection of Van Nuys and Victory boulevards, said Los Angeles Police Det. Robert Graybill.

On many days, Doug arrives at his restaurant management job in Costa Mesa and finds one or more illegal aliens waiting at the back door of the kitchen for a job. Bill, the owner of a sheet metal plant in Santa Ana where 40% of the employees are undocumented, says that prospective workers line up at the factory gate on most Monday mornings in case there's an opening on his production line. The selection of these job sites is hardly random.

After purchasing phony driver's licenses in the names of Gov. Pete Wilson and City Councilwoman Laura Chick, a task force of law enforcement agents arrested nine people and seized hundreds of phony documents at a Canoga Park apartment Friday. The ring, which authorities believe is one of the largest in the state, made counterfeit California driver's licenses, Social Security cards, automobile ownership papers and various immigration documents, said Los Angeles Police Detective Bob Graybill.

Undercover Immigration and Naturalization Service agents based in Los Angeles have raided what authorities are calling one of the nation's largest counterfeit document operations, arresting two alleged ringleaders and seizing more than 24,000 phony Social Security cards, sophisticated printing equipment and other materials. Documents produced by the ring--based in Los Angeles' Atwater Village neighborhood--have been found as far as New York, North Carolina and Texas, according to the INS.

A federal appeals court ruled that illegal immigrants seeking to stay in the United States can't be disqualified simply because they used fake Social Security cards to work. In a 2-1 ruling issued Wednesday, a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled a San Diego woman who came to the country illegally in 1968 was eligible to apply for legal residency under a 1986 amnesty, despite her conviction for using someone else's Social Security card.

A legal research company said it would greatly restrict customer access to Social Security numbers in response to complaints from Congress that its previous policy of limited sales of the numbers invited identity theft. Westlaw, an Eagan, Minn.-based legal research firm, said private companies and many government agencies would no longer be able to obtain such information from the company.

Which country is the least attractive to employees whose bosses want them to relocate? Would you believe the U.S.? It may not be No. 1, but it is one of the three most difficult countries for relocations for the first time in the 10 years that GMAC Global Relocation Services has been studying problems and attitudes in its industry. The company cites the threat of terrorism and the bureaucracy combating it. China and Japan were ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively.

Tried to renew your driver's license lately? The Department of Motor Vehicles says that 560,000 to 800,000 Californians are erroneously rejected for license renewals each year, thanks to a glitch in the system for collecting Social Security numbers. In the late 1990s, as part of the welfare reform package passed under former President Clinton, the U.S. began requiring states to collect the Social Security numbers of people wishing to obtain or renew a driver's license.

The Social Security Administration has sent a record number of warnings to employers that have reported incorrect employee Social Security numbers. In an effort to reduce errors in its system, the agency this month sent 750,000 letters to companies throughout the United States telling them they had reported invalid numbers, Social Security spokeswoman Mariana Gitomer said. About 30% are in California.

Federal investigators hunting for potential terrorists have been poring over hundreds of fraudulent Social Security numbers generated by a Southern California ring that catered mostly to Middle Eastern immigrants. Three people have pleaded guilty in the scheme, broken up before the Sept. 11 attacks, including a Jordanian national who worked in security at Los Angeles International Airport and a U.S.

The question pops up everywhere: at the airport, at the bar, at the Target return counter, at the bank, at the video store. May I see your driver's license? The document is treated as a national identification card. But there are no national standards for who can get one, or for how. In some states, applicants must show birth certificates, Social Security cards and utility bills to prove they are residents. In others, just about anyone can get a license or a state ID.

In a significant blow to the selling and trading of counterfeit identification cards, Huntington Park police announced Tuesday that they have confiscated fake documents worth an estimated $7 million. Stacks of printed material that would have been used to create 79,000 phony driver's licenses, Social Security cards and permanent-resident cards were seized in a raid Friday on a condominium near Lafayette Park west of Downtown Los Angeles.

Congress, trying to curb a rash of "identity thefts," is moving to ban states and companies from trafficking in one of the most ubiquitous forms of American identification: the Social Security number. If a bill making its way through the House becomes law as expected, stores no longer would be able to require a customer writing a check to give his or her Social Security number. States no longer could make public driver's license files with Social Security numbers.