When impostors commit criminal identity theft using your name, they may have used your identity for financial gain, but their primary objective is to avoid arrest or prosecution.

An identity thief can appear to be perpetrator of his or her illegal acts by just using your name and maybe your Social Security number. Law enforcement may take a mug shot, fingerprints, and do a background check. If you have never committed a crime, the background check will show a clean slate and won’t have the picture or fingerprints that would show you and the thief to be two different people. If the perpetrator hasn’t committed a crime before, or if his fingerprints aren’t in the FBI database that is reviewed by law enforcement, when he uses your name, your name will be attributed to his fingerprints in the FBI national database.

You now have a criminal-justice problem. Your first indication of this crime against you may be that you couldn’t get a job or were even fired from a job because of your fraudulent criminal record. Maybe you were stopped for speeding and arrested on the spot because of an outstanding warrant actually issued for your evil double. Or you might have ordered your own background check from an information broker (detailed in Chapter 8) and found a criminal conviction or arrest record.