istockphoto.com/stockphoto4u

Her two children are adults now, but when they were younger, Missy Coyne was very, very careful about giving out their Social Security numbers, no matter who asked.

When her son was scheduled for surgery, for example, and his doctor said he needed the boy’s number, Coyne refused. “He told me the surgeon would need it anyway,” Coyne recalls. “But he didn’t.”

As an identity theft investigator for the Baltimore County Police Department, Coyne knows something most parents don’t: Identity theft is not just a problem for adults, it’s a problem for kids as well.

And you thought you already had enough to worry about as a parent.

In fact, child identity theft is a distinctly easy crime to pull off because the child, of course, is such an unsuspecting victim and the most common perpetrator has such ready access to the child’s personal information. That’s because the most common perpetrator is a family member — usually a parent.

Identity theft might be easy for professionals, but child identity theft can be, well, child’s play.

Here’s how it typically works, say the experts: A parent runs up credit card debt or falls behind in the bills. In desperation, he uses his child’s Social Security number or other personal information to get a credit card. Then, as often as not, the parent proceeds to run up debt in the child’s name as well.

The problem for the child comes years later, when, as an adult, he tries, say, to rent an apartment or get a student loan, and discovers, to his dismay, that he already has bad credit.

“The intention is usually not malicious,” says John Sileo, who has written two books on identity theft and lectures frequently on the subject. “It’s a last-ditch option for the parents.”

Sileo and others who track it suspect child identity theft has become more of a problem in the past few years, as the recession has more families scrambling to stay above water. “It’s a relatively easy way to get access to money when you need it,” he says.

Still, child identity theft is nowhere near the problem that adult identity theft is. In Maryland, identity theft cases are not tracked by the age of the victim. But nationally, Federal Trade Commission figures indicate that about 5 percent of the total identity theft cases every year involve children. In Baltimore County, Coyne says, investigators only see “maybe one every year or two.”

But the crime comes with unique and devastating consequences. First of all, unlike most adults, a child probably won’t find out about the theft for several years, which means the bad credit could take longer and be harder to clean up.

“The damage can be much worse than for an adult,” says Hugh Williams, administrator of the identity theft program for the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, which polices identity theft in Maryland. “There could be eight or more years of bad credit.”

Second, while having your identity stolen is never pleasant, imagine finding out the thief was a family member — maybe mom or dad. “It can be a very difficult situation for the victim,” says Williams. “They may not want to file a police report against their own relative.”

“It’s often very sad,” adds Sileo. He said child identity theft is even harder to prosecute than adult identity theft. “No one is willing to press charges,” he says. “A minuscule number are ever prosecuted.”

Coyne recalls a recent case in which a woman who had been living in a shelter in Dundalk left behind two credit cards taken out in her children’s names. Investigators discovered that she had run up a total of about $1,500 in debt on the cards, Coyne said. The woman was charged with identity theft, but never prosecuted.

Williams agrees that the most common type of child identity theft, involving a parent, is usually not done for malicious reasons, but adds: “They (the parents) know they’re doing something wrong and it’s going to hurt the kid. It’s not a victimless crime.”

Adds Williams: “And it is one-hundred percent fraud. Using someone else’s information is fraud, it doesn’t matter if it’s a relative or not.”

Of course, not all child identity theft is perpetrated by a family member. Experts believe that increasingly, professional thieves are targeting children, in part because it can take so long before the crime is discovered and in part because so many people often have access to children’s personal information.

Linda Foley, founder of the Identity Theft Research Center in San Diego, tells the story of an elementary school where cafeteria workers were keeping track of lunches served by using the child’s Social Security number. “Imagine how easy it would be to photocopy that list of numbers,” she says. “It’s an incident waiting to happen because of an opportunity.”

Foley, whose center specializes in child identity cases, also notes that cyber-thieves can determine how old Social Security numbers are and whether the owners have had any credit reports done. They then use that information to pinpoint the numbers that likely belong to children and therefore are ripe for the taking.

Foley and other identity theft watchdogs advocate an array of solutions to the problem of child identity theft, including an end to the practice of issuing Social Security numbers to children and not offering credit to children until they are old enough to handle it.

Still, the fact that so many child identity thieves are parents complicates efforts to control the problem, since parents are the ones who should be doing the controlling. As Coyne puts it: “When the violator is the parent, identity theft is almost impossible to prevent.”

TIPS
• Give out your child’s Social Security number sparingly — assparingly as you would your own. Schools, doctors, clinics, even sports teams might ask for it, but in many cases, they do not need it.

• Caution your child from an early age not to give out her Social Security number. In fact, hold onto your child’s cards yourself. And don’t carry them around with you; keep them in a safe place.

• If your child receives unsolicited offers for credit cards or, worse yet, is contacted by a debt collection agency, ask for a credit report on her. If there is one, file a police report and, if needed, work to clean up any problems.

• Shortly before your teenaged child is likely to need credit as a young adult, ask for a credit report on her. If there isn’t one, that’s great news; if there is one, file a police report.