One of the more cold-water-in-your-face ways you may learn of identity theft is being told that you are already receiving a benefit to which you’ve just become entitled, or hearing that you have obligations to support a spouse or child you don’t have. Here is how to handle some situations that are, sadly, a new trend for identity-theft victims.

What if you are eligible to apply for Social Security benefits only to have been told that you are already receiving them? You contact the Social Security Administration fraud hotline, mentioned earlier in this chapter, and request the details of what benefits were being paid to your impersonator and to where payments were sent. Then you will dispute the information with your letter, affidavit, police reports, and evidence showing that you’ve never received benefits. You’ll show every discrepancy between you and your evil twin.

For Medicare, you’re also dealing with the Social Security Administration and will follow the above steps. States administer Medicaid, so in addition to appealing directly to the Medicaid fraud office in your state, and possibly the state where the swindler lives, you will also need to realize this is medical identity theft and take all measures explained in Chapter 14.

If you’re reading this section, then chances are you got hurt at work and went to the insurance carrier handling your employer’s workers’ compensation only to hear that you’ve been denied your right to benefits because you’re already receiving them. Or you applied for disability and were denied since your impostor is receiving payments. You’ll have to use the techniques in Chapter 8 for dealing with insurance fraud as well as in Chapter 14 for medical identity theft.

Always call the agency involved first and ask for the proper contact concerning fraud. Get the telephone number and address so you can send your evidence of fraud along with your FTC affidavit and police report. Request documentation of the details of care as well as cash payments using the information in Chapter 8. Then use the methods in Chapter 14 to obtain details of the care provided to the fraudster. Dispute the details with the healthcare providers, then go back to the workers’ comp carrier and present the discrepancies, including showing that you do not live at the address to which it is sending the checks.

If you’ve been denied any of your veteran benefits, such as education, health, disability, home loan, or pension, because someone else is receiving them, then you’ll need to contact the Veteran’s Administration. Also contact law enforcement to get your identity-theft report.

You’ll need to contact your state agency and also the office of Veterans Benefits Administration (www.vba.va.gov/VBA/). Call 1-800-827-1000 and then follow up with your letter of explanation of denials of benefits, copy of your veteran’s card with your photo, your FTC affidavit, and your police report. Ask for an investigation and reinstatement. You may need to hire a lawyer to deal with the VA’s general counsel’s office to reinstate benefits.

You should also contact the Office of Inspector General (www.va.gov/oig), which accepts complaints of criminal activity, including theft from VA beneficiaries. The OIG doesn’t handle cases that it thinks should be handled by other offices, including the VBA, but this way you’re covering your bases.

If you’re not getting the action you need from the VBA, there is also the Board of Veterans Appeals (www.va.gov/vbs/bva) that gives you a higher authority to challenge any decision based on the actions of your doppelganger.

Should the problem be with healthcare benefits, you’ll likely need to get healthcare records so you can prove your point, as Chapter 14 shows. Hopefully, though, you’ll be able to do much of your research working with a single healthcare provider organization: the Veteran’s Administration.

I’ve had clients who have had their checking accounts attached or wages garnished to pay child support for kids they didn’t have. Some victims learn that spouses they never had were trying to obtain support payments from them. It’s tragic because an innocent spouse has sometimes married an identity thief and lived a sham marriage to an impostor, totally unaware of reality. Even the spouse is defrauded.

If you’re accused of failure to pay support, you’ll need to contact the entity that has informed you of the problem. It could be your bank, employer, the district attorney’s office, or child support office. Any such action will start with a court order for support. Get a copy of the court order. Once you get a copy of the court documents, look for the name and contact number of the attorney or district attorney who represented the impostor’s spouse or children on the court filing papers. If the person asking for support represented himself or herself, you will need to contact him or her; that information will be in the court papers.

There is a chance that he or she is an impostor, too. If that is a concern, go directly to the clerk of the court or the judge who issued the order. Write a letter to the judge including your police report, affidavit, and evidence of the fraud. If you have a difficult judge, you may need your own lawyer to ask for help from the lawyer who filed the case. (Also see Chapter 16 on how to deal with the court.)