Ghosting (identity theft)

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Ghosting is a form of identity theft in which someone steals the identity, and sometimes even the role within society, of a specific dead person (the "ghost") who is not widely known to be deceased. Usually, the person who steals this identity (the "ghoster") is roughly the same age that the ghost would have been if still alive, so that any documents citing the birthdate of the ghost will not be conspicuously incorrect if appropriated by the thief now claiming to be that person.

The use of counterfeit I.D. falsely documenting a completely fictional identity is not ghosting, as fake I.D. cannot be used to obtain social services or to interact with government agencies or law enforcement officials. The purpose of ghosting is to enable the ghoster to claim for his or her own use an existing identity that is already listed in government records: an identity that is dormant because its original possessor is dead.

Ghosting is based on the premise (now less justified than it used to be) that separate government agencies do not share a total exchange of information. Therefore, a ghoster can obtain a passport or Social Security benefits in the name of a dead person, because the agencies in charge of those services do not routinely cross-check an applicant's history to determine if a death certificate has been issued in that person's name.

[edit] General description

Typically, identity theft is done for criminal financial gain, with the thief preying upon the credit rating of a living person who is an active member of society. The identity thief retains his own name and place in society, while making unlawful use of someone else's more advantageous financial status. The so-called "identity thief" is really more interested in exploiting someone else's financial credit, rather than actually acquiring that person's identity. The motives for ghosting are more complex. The ghoster is sincerely interested in acquiring another person's identity for his or her own ongoing use, and therefore usually selects a person who is dead, to avoid the risks that would occur if two living people used the same Social Security number. Generally, a ghoster is unwilling to sustain his or her existing identity, and takes a new identity to get a fresh start in life. Unlike a typical identity thief — who squeezes quick profits from one stolen identity, then moves on to the next victim — a ghoster may actively seek to acquire and maintain a respectable credit rating in his or her new identity.

Ghosting is largely a phenomenon of the 20th century. Before the arrival of the Social Security system, a person who possessed no identity documents — no birth records, no high school diploma — could live openly without incurring suspicion. Counterfeit I.D. could not be easily exposed as fake. Only with the arrival of income tax and social benefits in the 1920s did it become essential for every adult to possess an identity that was registered in government archives: if not their own lawful identity, then one appropriated from a person no longer using it. In the 21st century, advances in technology have made ghosting increasingly difficult to achieve ... while governments have increased the penalties for those who get caught.

Dashiell Hammett's novel The Maltese Falcon (1930) recounts the story — apparently based on a true case — of a businessman named Flitcraft who spontaneously abandons his career and his marriage, abruptly moving to another city and inventing another identity. If this incident did indeed occur in the 1920s or earlier, Flitcraft would have encountered little difficulty in establishing a new life without formal documents such as a birth certificate and Social Security number. If this had occurred ten years later, Flitcraft would have needed a ghost identity to begin his new life.

In the days before computerized databases, ghosting was easy to do ... especially in Great Britain, where birth certificates and death certificates are public documents. The General Records Office in London contains indexed registers of all births, deaths, marriages and adoptions in England and Wales. The typical ghoster (usually male) might consult the Deaths index (black volumes, archived by year) for the period 15 years after his own birth, seeking records of the death of a male approximately 15 years old (that is, whose birthdate would be near the birthdate of the ghoster). Finding a suitable candidate, the ghoster would then consult the Births index (red volumes, in a different section of the Records Office) for the deceased person's date of birth. Armed with this knowledge, he could then pay a small fee to obtain a copy of the deceased's birth certificate. Using this document as the foundation for his stolen identity, the ghoster would gradually acquire evidence enabling him to pass himself off as the other person, still alive: some of this evidence being faked, with other evidence — such as school records — having being legitimately issued to the deceased person before his death. Other archives outside of Britain, such as the genealogy records of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have unwittingly served this same purpose of enabling ghosters to find new identities.

Although the majority of known ghosters are male, it is actually easier for a woman to appropriate a dead person's identity than it is for a man. A female ghoster can steal the identity of a dead woman who had married and taken her husband's name: detection is more difficult in this case, because the death certificate and the birth certificate will show two different surnames. Also, gaps in the ghost identity's employment history (for the years between the ghost's death and the date when the ghoster claims that identity) will arouse less suspicion if the impostor is a woman, who might conceivably have spent the transition years as a homemaker with no wages.

In the 1970s, a counterculture publishing firm in California named Eden Press published a pamphlet, The Paper Trip, giving detailed instructions for acquiring a dead person's identity. Among other pointers, the pamphlet advised readers to search newspaper archives for old articles about an entire family getting killed in an accident while on vacation outside of their home state. This scenario offers several advantages to a potential ghoster:

• Because the incident involved multiple deaths, there are multiple candidates (of different ages, and both sexes) for an identity that the ghoster can steal.
• Because the entire family died in the same incident, the dead person whose identity is chosen for ghosting is not likely to have any immediate relatives who are still alive and aware of his death.
• Because the family died outside their home state, their birth records and death records are archived in two different states ... and are unlikely to be cross-referenced. Also, if the deceased family's remains were not returned to their home community for burial, the staffers in the local records office are unlikely to be aware that the family are deceased ... and will not be suspicious when someone claiming to be a member of this family abruptly requests a copy of his birth certificate.
• Because the deaths occurred years ago, new requests for an old birth certificate are unlikely to stir anyone's memory of that individual's death.

Whereas typical identity thieves will steal the credit rating of anyone — regardless of age, race or gender — a ghoster intends to live in the stolen identity, and therefore usually seeks to acquire the identity of a dead person whose physical description strongly resembles the living ghoster's appearance: similar birthdate, height, race or ethnic background, same gender. Rare exceptions are transgender ghosters (see below), who seek to acquire the identity of a dead person of the opposite sex, but otherwise resembling the ghoster as much as possible.

[edit] Drawbacks

Ghosting is no longer so easy as it used to be. 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 archives of fingerprints. If a ghoster was arrested and fingerprinted in his 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. But not any more. 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.

Another factor discouraging modern-day ghosting is the development of biometric I.D. and DNA typing. Example: the police are seeking a fugitive named Sam Smith, wanted for murdering his wife and children. A man fitting Smith's description is detained ... but he claims to be John Jones, and he has documentation for this identity. Oddly, despite his impeccable I.D., the purported John Jones cannot produce any living relatives to verify his identity. Meanwhile, the authorities extract a DNA sample from the detained man. If this strongly resembles the DNA patterns of Smith's murdered children, he is almost certainly the fugitive Sam Smith using the ghosted identity of an actual John Jones. If DNA samples can be obtained from relatives of the person corresponding to John Jones's birth data, and these DNA patterns do not resemble the DNA of the detained man, then his John Jones identity is false.

In the U.S.A., 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 male 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: American citizens are now issued a Social Security number at birth, 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 10 years earlier (and who claims to be that individual, still living) will immediately be asked why he has not reported any wages for the past 10 years ... and will be challenged to explain how he has supported himself for 10 years without wages. There will be a gap in the tax records too, 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. As a result of the September 11, 2001 attacks (also known as "9/11"), any person now found to be in possession of false I.D. is potentially suspected of terrorism. The unlawful acquisition of false I.D. — whether counterfeit, or falsely appropriated from a dead person — will now be prosecuted far more aggressively than it 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 an armed robber and political radical 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 re-arrested.

[edit] Types of ghosters

Most ghosters are running away from something: a criminal record, a marriage, or possibly bad debts. Unlike more typical identity thieves, it is often the case that a ghoster is a former criminal who genuinely desires to reform ... and who seeks an unblemished identity (even if acquired illegally) as a necessary part of the process. Several members of the revolutionary youth movement of the 1960s eventually disavowed their radical pasts, and desired to become normal citizens with absolutely no ties to their earlier actions. In several cases, former radicals were able to evade arrest for more than 20 years because — through ghosting — they acquired new identities, in which they proceeded to live entirely law-abiding lives. During the Vietnam war, many young men in the U.S.A. avoided the draft by fleeing to Canada or other nations, where they acquired ghost identities enabling them to live as natives of those countries.

During the Holocaust, many Jewish refugees in Poland and Austria were issued fraudulent baptismal certificates by Catholic priests, enabling them to pass as Catholics. Technically, this qualifies as ghosting because the identity papers were authentic documents, supplied by the authorities empowered to issue them (the clergy), rather than being outright counterfeits.

During the days of racial segregation in the United States and apartheid in South Africa, light-skinned mulattos who were legally defined as Negroes had strong incentive to pass as Caucasians. It may well be that some of these individuals stole the identities of deceased white persons, acquiring birth certificates that listed them as "white". (In South Africa there was a third legal category of coloured people, which would make the transition less noticeable.)

A common trait among victims of sexual abuse — especially if the abuse occurred in childhood — is the desire to become someone else: someone who is not the victim of the abuse. This is especially true if the sexual abuse was incest: because the victim and the sexual predator are related, the victim feels further pressure to escape her (or his) family name and identity. It is believed that a substantial number of ghosters are the adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Ghosters who fit this profile are seldom discovered, since — after their original crime of acquiring new I.D. unlawfully — they generally follow law-abiding lives in their new identities.

The most famous ghoster is Ferdinand Waldo Demara, alias "The Great Impostor", whose case is unusual for two reasons: because he appropriated the identities of several different men (in series); and because all of Demara's ghosted identities were persons still alive at the time, and therefore able to confront him. After Demara's death in 1982, it was revealed (in his New York Times obituary) that he had been arrested twice on charges of attempted sex with minors. Demara's aberrant sexual behavior, combined with his penchant for serial ghosting, strongly indicates that he was a childhood victim of sexual abuse: probably incest.

The American film actor Wallace Ford was a successful ghoster. Born in England under the name Samuel Jones, he was estranged from his family at an early age, and soon left for America. In his early twenties, Jones became a hobo and stowed away aboard freight trains with a fellow hobo named Wallace Ford. The two men eventually were in a train accident: Jones survived, but Ford was killed. Jones then appropriated the other man's name and some aspects of his biography, becoming a successful actor under the name Wallace Ford, eventually starring on Broadway and performing in Hollywood films. As "Wallace Ford", Jones used the real Ford's birthdate and other statistics on all his own tax returns and official documents, even applying for a passport as Wallace Ford for his 1937 return to England. Only shortly before his death in 1966 did the actor reveal the complete truth about his identity.

Jones (Ford) was fortunate to have an ideal candidate for his ghost identity: a dead person of his own race, gender and approximate age, whose death was never officially recorded. (No one came forward to identify the real Wallace Ford's remains.) Typically, ghosters seeking a dead person's identity must choose someone whose death has been recorded in public archives ... creating a risk that, after donning this new identity, the ghoster will eventually be confronted with a copy of his "own" death certificate.

Another probable ghoster was Larry Semon. Born in 1889, Semon had a phenomenally successful career as a comedian in silent films, but he experienced severe financial problems with the arrival of sound films, forcing him to declare bankruptcy. Soon afterwards, in 1928, Semon's family reported his sudden death from pneumonia at age 39. It is now believed that Semon's relatives falsely reported his death to deceive his creditors, and Semon started a different career in a new and obscure identity.

Some fictional characters are ghosters: one example is Seymour Skinner, the grade-school principal in The Simpsons. Several years after his first appearance on this series, Skinner revealed that he was an impostor who had stolen the real Seymour Skinner's life and identity after the real Skinner died in combat overseas. Bizarrely, the false Skinner was abetted in this scheme by the real Skinner's mother, who preferred the impostor over her actual son.

An unusual subclass of ghosters are transsexuals: transgender individuals who feel a compulsion to change their physical gender, or at least who strongly desire to live full-time as a member of the opposite sex. There are occasional news items about the death of a male recluse who turns out to have been a biological woman living as a man, using a male name and identity documents issued to a (long-dead) genuine male. It is theoretically possible that the same process has been reversed: a presumably small-bodied man has acquired for his own use a deceased woman's I.D., fulfilling his desire to live as a female without the ordeal of sex-change surgery.

Here, too, Great Britain was a special case. In the U.S.A. and most other industrialized nations, a person who undergoes sex reassignment surgery can usually petition the government to issue a new birth certificate and passport reflecting the change of sex. In Britain, the law did not allow this. Until the Gender Recognition Act 2004, if a British-born genetic male underwent sex-change surgery to live as a passable female, the resulting transwoman would have been denied female I.D., and had to continue to live officially as a male. Similarly, a British-born genetic female who surgically became a transman would have been denied male I.D., and been required to remain officially a woman. As of the passing of the above Act, this is no longer the case.

Another quirk of British law requires that all children born with ambiguous genitals must be registered as male at birth, even if (when older) they develop female traits and identify as female. At least one case has been documented of an Englishwoman (born with an enlarged clitoris) who resorted to ghosting: appropriating for her own use a deceased Englishwoman's name and (female) identity ... because her own birth certificate listed her as male, and the British government refused to amend this error.

Undoubtedly, there are other successful ghosters whose imposture has never been discovered, because — unlike Wallace Ford — they never revealed their imposture.