Chicago Center of ID Theft

Chicago is revealed as a center of identity theft as a byproduct of the federal government's efforts to stop undocumented hiring. Tribune:

In the past, an employer may have simply looked the other way when an undocumented immigrant showed up with fake papers. But a federal affidavit in this case alleges that the QSI managers directed their prospective hires to buy stolen IDs in Chicago, in this case many from U.S. citizens living as far away as Texas or New York.

In some instances, the company manager, Gerardo Dominguez-Chacon, supplied workers with Social Security numbers, the affidavit states. The fraud was uncovered with the help of several QSI workers who had been arrested earlier and agreed to wear recording devices, the affidavit states.

"It used to be that someone would come to the U.S. illegally and the first thing they'd do is go to 26th Street and purchase a set of fake documents," Montenegro said, referring to Chicago's predominantly immigrant Little Village neighborhood. "What we're seeing more and more is the market for valid IDs, actual Social Security numbers and IDs of legal permanent residents whose IDs are unwittingly being stolen from them."

The practice "causes a lot of financial problems, a lot of tax problems where someone may be paying taxes on incomes they're not earning," she said.

And there's the issue of fake driver's licenses, fake voter IDs. Real people get hurt or even killed as a result. Voters are disenfranchised. We could use some enforcement at the state and local level, but we won't hold our breath. Meanwhile, rising crime stats for states are heavily clustered along our southern border. For now.