Need bogus Social Security card, head to Dallas

[Don Buckbee]

Teaching our children deceit, lieing, and manipulation...
Don

By TAWNELL D. HOBBS / The Dallas Morning News
tdhobbs@dallasnews.com

Years after being advised by a state agency to stop, the Dallas Independent School District continued to provide foreign citizens with fake Social Security numbers to get them on the payroll quickly.

Some of the numbers were real Social Security numbers already assigned to people elsewhere. And in some cases, the state's educator certification office unknowingly used the bogus numbers to run criminal background checks on the new hires, most of whom were brought in to teach bilingual classes.

The practice was described in an internal report issued in September by the district's investigative office, which looked into the matter after receiving a tip. The report said the Texas Education Agency learned of the fake numbers in 2004 and told DISD then that the practice "was illegal."

It's unclear how long DISD had been issuing the phony numbers, and district officials didn't know Thursday how many had been given out. But the investigative report and interviews with DISD employees indicate the practice went on for several years before it was discontinued this past summer.

DISD human resources chief Kim Olson, who came to the district in 2007, said that she learned about the false numbers this past summer around the time the district's investigative unit was looking into them and that she put a stop to the practice.

"There's no way we should be doing that kind of stuff," Ms. Olson said. "Even if your intention is good to help employees get paid, you can't use inappropriate procedures to do that."

Stopgap approach
The investigative report, obtained by The News through a records request, found "that the inappropriate procedure of assigning false SSNs has been systemic for several years" within DISD's alternative certification program, which prepares new teachers for state certification when they don't have traditional credentials.

A call Thursday to DISD's alternative certification office was not returned. In recent years, DISD has hired people from various countries, including Mexico and Spain, to deal with a shortage of bilingual teachers.

The fake numbers were assigned as a stopgap to expedite the hiring process, the report says. The numbers were supposed to serve as temporary identification numbers until employees received real Social Security numbers. Once employees got the real numbers, they were supposed to tell district officials so the fake ones could be replaced.

The investigation found no indication that the fake numbers were provided to the Teacher Retirement System, the Internal Revenue Service or the Social Security Administration.

However, according to the report, a sampling of several fake numbers showed that they had been included in a July quarterly report sent to the Texas Workforce Commission.

Also, when investigators reviewed a sampling of personnel files, they learned that the fake numbers were entered on Department of Homeland Security and IRS forms. The forms are not transmitted outside the district but are made available to the appropriate federal agency upon request.

In July, the district discovered that 26 of the false numbers were in use after matching DISD employee Social Security numbers with the Social Security Administration database. The numbers were already being used in Pennsylvania. DISD officials did not know Thursday whether the practice had caused problems for anyone holding the legitimate numbers.

The district's investigative unit, called the Office of Professional Responsibility, began looking into the fake numbers after the Texas Education Agency's division of educator investigations advised the unit in July that it had discovered the district issuing false numbers in 2004.

That year, the TEA division became aware of the practice when DISD faxed copies of about 100 new Social Security Administration cards for foreign citizens – most of whom had been assigned district-issued numbers – and asked TEA to replace the old numbers, according to the investigative report. The state office told DISD at the time that it's illegal to make up Social Security numbers and pass them off as legitimate, the report says.

'A mess'
Doug Phillips, TEA's director of investigations and fingerprinting, said his office believed the district had stopped the practice because there was no evidence that it continued. He said Thursday that he didn't know which laws forbid issuing fake Social Security numbers.

"We just knew it looked bad and smelled bad," Mr. Phillips said. "That was the first time we'd ever heard of that one."

Mr. Phillips said it created "a mess" in a state database. He said teacher applicants who don't have a Social Security number can receive a temporary identification number, which begins with a "P," from TEA until they get one from the federal government.

The DISD-issued Social Security numbers began with "200" – a prefix assigned to people in Pennsylvania, and Mr. Phillips' office noted that many ended with sequential numbers.

The investigative report also found that the district hasn't been turning in "new hire" forms to the Texas attorney general's office, which uses the information to find parents who haven't paid child support. Failure to provide the forms to the attorney general can result in a $25 fine for each employee. The district doesn't know yet whether it will have to pay any fines.

Ms. Olson said new processes have been put in place to address problems noted in the report, including making crosschecks with the Social Security Administration.

"You can't just arbitrarily issue Social Security numbers," she said. "Even if your intention is good, it's not legal."

[Marlin T]

Good God man, out tax dollars at work huh? Geez

[artabr]

I ran accross this last night. It's nuts. It's like we're in a airplane and 3 engines have flamed out and number 4 is sputtering. Ain't nothing left to do but stick our head between our knees and kiss our collective (ironic word there) arse good by.


Art

[KING64]

I took a post retirement job with a state horseracing commission. My duties included background checks on license applicants who wished to participate in one way or another in the racing industry. I never kept an accurate account but I would estimate 70% of the Mexican applicants for groom positions presented forged SS cards. The cards were of such quality it would take a forensic examiner to distinguish them from authentic issued cards. The numbers were valid....but to someone else. I had some of the applicants tell me it easy and relatively cheap in California to obtain these phony cards. I could contact the SS Administration and give them the applicant's name and the SS number and they would tell me if the name andnumber matched and if it was issued to another name. I could not, nor did I have need, to know the name of the rightful owner of the SS card. With all our technology one would think a secure SS card could be produced.

As one of my old sheriff's once said when the crime rate was rising like bread dough....."We're doomed."

[artabr]

King, you may be familiar with a story that I heard about out of the Northwest. A lady in either Washington or Oregon recieved a taxes due notice from the IRS. The amount due was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
This happened a few years back and I'm having hard time remembering the exact numbers. If anybody has any knowledge of this story please feel free to correct me.
Anyhow, her Social Security number had been stolen and repetely sold on street corners in Cal. and Texas.
The illegals would then take cash and subcontractors jobs. Taxes due would then be charged to this poor woman's S.S.#
The government was holding this woman responsible for at least IIRC 50 peoples back taxes. I think I'm real low on the people count.

This was on either 20/20 or 60 Minutes a few years ago.
I'm going to try to find this story, if I can.


Art

[Lori Mick]

When I was living in Texas, I had a short term job for a while as a bookkeeper for a housing company. I saw, first hand, how the great American dream works down there. Without going into details about how the immigrants did it, I saw thousands of our tax dollars refunded to them on their tax returns. Refunds that were never taken out of their income. And SS's were never checked. They also got alot of mortgages because it was just too easy and the count of defaults grew and grew monthly. that was just in Texas.
And they wonder why the country is in such an economic mess. sigh

[LDBennett]

I have an older friend who about 15 years ago decided to retire. He went to the SS agency to sign up only to find two minor problems:

The first was that his SS# was being used by a woman 500 miles away that he did not know to collect retirement payments from his SS account.

His employer of decades religiously took out his SS taxes for decades and never forwared it to the federal governement. His employer was his father (still alive at the time).

These two "minor" problems took about six months to straighten out, delaying his retirement. It pays to keep track of your SS benefits. Don't just throw the yearly statement away when it arrives in the mail. Review it! And keep all your pay stubs (as my friend did).

LDBennett