Ghosting (identity Theft) - Drawbacks

Drawbacks

Ghosting is no longer as easy as it once was. This is largely due to the increasing computerization of vital records and the increasing power of search engines. Until the 1990s, each state in the United States maintained its birth records and death records in separate registries with no cross-referencing. Modern search engines enable government clerks to establish quickly if a death certificate has ever been issued to the person named on a given birth certificate.

Many ghosters have criminal records under their original identities and seek new identities in order to gain a fresh start (or to start a new criminal career without the prior arrest record). Before the days of enhanced computer imaging, it was a difficult and time-consuming process for law-enforcement officials to search fingerprints archives. If a ghoster were arrested and fingerprinted under their new identity (with no prior arrests under that name), there was a good chance that authorities would fail to discover any records of a prior arrest for the same set of fingerprints linked to a different name and birthdate. This is no longer true. Modern imaging technology now enables search engines to scan a database of millions of fingerprints quickly, finding a positive match which police can transmit electronically to other police forces anywhere in the world. New identity documents can no longer conceal prior arrests.

In the United States, it was formerly the case that citizens were not issued a Social Security number until their first paid employment. Thus, in the year 1975, a man ghoster aged 25 would acquire the birth certificate of a boy who was born circa 1950 (the same age as the ghoster) but who had died at age 15 or younger. An individual who died before adulthood would not be likely to possess a Social Security number; therefore, a ghoster claiming to be this person and applying for a first-time Social Security number at age 25 would not arouse suspicion if he could explain why he waited until age 25 to begin working for wages. But a ghoster who attempted this scheme in the year 2000 (or later) would arouse great suspicion because parents are now required to acquire a Social Security number for their offspring before the next annual income tax return is filed, and government computers can instantly retrieve any individual's entire history of employment and income-tax records. A ghoster who applies to a Social Security office for a replacement of a Social Security card issued to someone who died ten years earlier (who claims to be that individual, still living) will immediately be asked why he has not reported any wages for the past ten years and will be challenged to explain how he has supported himself for ten years without wages. There will also be a gap in the tax records, requiring the ghoster to explain why he hasn't filed tax returns for the intervening years.

Another factor that discourages ghosting is the fact that the stakes are now much higher. In prior times, a criminal with a long record of felony convictions had strong incentive to commit the minor crime of ghosting in order to acquire a new identity with no prior arrests. This is no longer true. The unlawful acquisition of false identification, whether counterfeit or falsely appropriated from a dead person, will now be prosecuted far more aggressively than he might have been in the past.

Ghosting has never been foolproof. One reason is the overconfidence of ghosters who, after acquiring a new identity, refuse to abandon the habits and associations of their previous identity. Christopher John Boyce was a spy for the USSR, traitor to the USA, and an armed bank robber who was nicknamed "The Falcon" for his interest in competitive falconry. There are barely a hundred falconers in the entire United States, and Boyce was known personally to all of them. Eventually, Boyce was arrested. After escaping from federal prison and acquiring a new identity via ghosting, he resumed his old habit of attending falconry competitions, now wearing a new name but still associating with falconers who had known him by his original name. Boyce was swiftly rearrested.