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This is one of the "new" ways that stolen identities are used. About a decade ago, there were a number of raids by Immigration on meat packing plants across th

This is one of the "new" ways that stolen identities are used. About a decade ago, there were a number of raids by Immigration on meat packing plants across the Midwestern US. What kicked the raids off was when one Hispanic woman who worked at Immigration was being dinged by the IRS for not paying some $160k in delinquent taxes. Upon investigation, it turned out that her name & SSN were being used simultaneously by more than 50 different workers in the meatpacking industry. Several newspapers in the Denver metro area reported on the raids. Some of the raids happened in Greeley [0]. I remember one of the papers reporting that the only signs in English in the entire plant were the emergency Exit signs over doors. Also mentioned in the papers were that a valid name & SSN combination was worth about $50 if the name was Hispanic, and about $5 otherwise. Some of the name & SSN combinations were used simultaneously more than 100 times, with some repeats being at the same employer simultaneously. Several of the companies raided by Immigration knew that the workers were in the country illegally but didn't care as long as the name & SSN combo made it through some verification process [1]. Notes: 0 - Greeley is about 60 miles north of Denver. When the wind is "right", one can smell the feedlots. Normally, when you drive out of the mountains, you can see a huge brown cloud floating over the Denver metro area. When the wind is "right", you can see a sharp termination of that cloud. The chemicals in the cloud (mostly nitrates and nitrites from exhaust) react with the chemicals from the feedlots (mostly ammonia from cow urine & feces) to form ammonium nitrate (frequently used in fertilizer & explosives) to precipitate out of the air (leaving clear sky). 1 - This clip from Hogan's Heroes displays the willful ignorance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HblPucwN-m0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HblPucwN-m0

throwie_wayward 4y ago
that's a fine example of capitalism driving costs down and making things cheaper.
Unselect6889 4y ago
Interesting! That reminds me of a similar arrangement I dealt with in Fast Food. Back in 2008 I was working at a Wendy's where the majority of the staff would routinely "resubmit" their applications. I don't know the intricacies of the process, but the way it was explained to me was roughly something like this: 1) Illegal fills out application using a fake SSN 2) (Physical) Paperwork gets reviewed by manager, to make sure everything is filled out. Wait on sending it until they are bugged by corporate to submit the "new" employee applications 3) Send it to corporate 4) Corporate goes through a stack of however many "new" employee applications they have received across the region. Let's assume it's 10,000+ 5) After corporate reviews the "new" employee applications, they gather up the names and SSNs, which are sent off to some sort of verification system 6) An error is thrown out and sent back to corporate saying that the name and address doesn't match the SSN provided. Corporate waits to send this information for a few days/weeks, depending on how many they are processing at a given time 7) The store receives a rejection notification sometime later 8) Wait about 1 week or so until corporate starts complaining, return to step 1 Some of the guys I was working with had gone through this process for - no joke - at least 2 to 3 years. Since they were continually seen as "new" employees, there was no sort of issue with firing previous employees or anything like that. It also didn't hurt that different information was being provided each time. After all, corporate had no way of claiming that Jose Guzman at 123 fake street, with SSN 123-45-6789 was the same Jose Guzman at 123 fake street, with SSN 987-65-4321, since they didn't want to be accused of racism. It wasn't so much a problem to be resolved, as it is a "discrepancy" to be "corrected". The only correction needed was to have the "new" employee resubmit their application. On a side-note, I'm not exactly sure how any of this worked, but it also led to the "new" employees making about $3 per hour. I accidentally left a paycheck out at one point, and one of the Spanish guys saw it and flipped out, yelled to the other guys, and they all started flipping out too. I guess they were under the impression that minimum wage was whatever the managers told them it was? I felt bad for them, in a way, since they were working extremely long days, but they were also not paying any taxes, sleeping on the job, and would flee the country once their home was built back in their home country. Basically, they were treated poorly, but they were also standing to save up about a full decades worth of money by stealing from the country they broke into illegally. I don't really hold any hostility over them doing that, I just don't hold much sympathy either.
- excitom 4y ago
  You lost me at "stealing from the country they broke into illegally." I see people working hard to try to improve their and their families' lives. Surely the employer is deducting for income tax, SS tax, and medicare tax from their paychecks, and they will not see an income tax "refund" next April nor will they ever collect SS nor Medicare benefits. And if the employer is not making these deductions then who is doing the "stealing" exactly?
  - imwillofficial 4y ago
    The people not paying the taxes after committing tax fraud? Also all the corp employees who facilities this fraud.
    - lazide 4y ago
      Wage workers generally have taxes withheld involuntarily, at least unless someone makes them manually override it. Interestingly, that seems to trigger the taxman to start looking, which is when folks get busted. It’s in some mentioned anecdotes and articles here. Even more interesting? If they instead just abandon the withheld taxes, no one seems interested in actually fixing the problem. It would be trivial to mandate employers do realtime submissions of the employment eligibility paperwork for instance, but it’s actually illegal to send it to anyone, or attempt to do anything more with that information (like have a service somewhere that tracks these things and notifies employers of obviously invalid cases like a SSN being used across 5 states for 50 different job applications at different employers at once). A cynical person would say it’s because as long as the people who need to be paid are getting paid, unskilled labor is cheap and easy to scare/boss around, illegal immigration is not actually a problem, but an opportunity for them.
    - 1659447091 4y ago
      Wouldn't it put them in tax exempt bracket if they are making $3/hr? Not an accountant so really not sure about these things, but thought under a certain amount, you don't pay taxes.
  - 4y ago
KirillPanov 4y ago
> Upon investigation, it turned out that her name & SSN were being used simultaneously by more than 50 different workers in the meatpacking industry. How the fark does the IRS not notice when a single SSN gets W-2s from 50 different employers, each with a different payee name? All this stuff is completely computerized. Unlike tax returns, it is no longer possible to file W-2s on paper. You must file them electronically.
- toast0 4y ago
  >> her name & SSN were being used > each with a different payee name? Everyone was using the same name. There's no rule that says you can't be on 50 different payrolls.
- Tangurena2 4y ago
  The IRS & USCIS only get to do what Congress allows them to do. When corporate lobbyists want the IRS to crack down on illegal immigrant workers, then there will be an effective crackdown. Until then, it will be possible to (cheaply) use stolen identities to get jobs past online verification. Equifax - one of the huge credit reporting agencies - is trying to squeeze in to this space. https://theworknumber.com/ https://theworknumber.com/ Until then, Form I-9 gets filed on paper and that paper is kept in the employer's office. After 3 years, they can discard it. Nova Law Review article with some background of my original post: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/nlr/vol32/iss2/6/ https://nsuworks.nova.edu/nlr/vol32/iss2/6/ Department of Labor is upset that one of the consent decrees with Walmart gives them 15 day notice before any investigation of wages: https://www.oig.dol.gov/public/reports/oa/2006/04-06-001-04-420.pdf https://www.oig.dol.gov/public/reports/oa/2006/04-06-001-04-... I can't find the consent decree where Walmart gets advance notice of Immigration investigations. All of the primary links are dead. 30 or 60 day advance notice - this will prevent SWAT-style raids like those at the Swift meatpacking plants. Like the above one, if Walmart is "in compliance" when Immigration is allowed in the door, then they are exempt from fines & penalties. Walmart paid $11M in penalties for this one. Several of the blog posts reporting on the consent decree imply that the no-jail plus advance notice were a result of large campaign contributions to one political party along with political appointees interfering with enforcement actions. > Not a RICO case, but illustrates ICE efforts to hold companies responsible for their subcontractor’s violations. https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/work-visas/50104/immigration-law-enforcement-developments-contractor-liability-for-undocumented-subcontractor-employees https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/work-visas/50104/immigra... https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3345232 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3345232 > At the time of the raids, the government said they had wiretaps showing that Wal-Mart executives knew the company was using illegal workers. However, as part of the settlement the company will not admit any wrongdoing or liability. https://money.cnn.com/2005/03/18/news/fortune500/wal_mart_settlement/ https://money.cnn.com/2005/03/18/news/fortune500/wal_mart_se...
pwillia7 4y ago
I don't think it's the employer's legal duty to verify the validity of the SSN, just that it is provided. That kind of makes sense but it's a shame we have no system to actually validate that. It's probably on purpose so we can have immigration and workers for the jobs American's don't want to do but not seem like we're pro immigration on the political front
- autoexec 4y ago
  I don't think it's unreasonable to expect employers to not hire tens or hundreds of people using identical names and social security numbers. If it can be shown that an employer knew, or reasonably should have known, that they were employing illegal immigrants we should be throwing the book at them with full force. There are no jobs that Americans don't want to do. There are only jobs that Americans don't want to do at exploitative wages.
  - pwillia7 4y ago
    I didn't mean morally -- I meant legally they do not have to verify the authenticity of the numbers. And I agree with you about the exploitative wages mostly, but I don't know what to do about it. So we pay real wages to migrant farm workers -- Even if we double subsidies for corn and whatnot, beef now costs 3X at the supermarket. In Texas, 1 in 5 children are hungry every day[1]. How do you do it so that more children aren't made less food safe and you don't cause riots/social unrest from exploding inflation? Sigh.... I wish we could at least all work on the problems instead of all the sloganeering always going on. Not to say you're doing that, it just feels like we can never have any kind of real conversation about what to do anymore -- Maybe it's just that no one is driving the bus anymore. Have a good day! [1]:https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/texas https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/texas

throwie_wayward 4y ago

that's a fine example of capitalism driving costs down and making things cheaper.

Unselect6889 4y ago

Interesting! That reminds me of a similar arrangement I dealt with in Fast Food. Back in 2008 I was working at a Wendy's where the majority of the staff would routinely "resubmit" their applications. I don't know the intricacies of the process, but the way it was explained to me was roughly something like this: 1) Illegal fills out application using a fake SSN 2) (Physical) Paperwork gets reviewed by manager, to make sure everything is filled out. Wait on sending it until they are bugged by corporate to submit the "new" employee applications 3) Send it to corporate 4) Corporate goes through a stack of however many "new" employee applications they have received across the region. Let's assume it's 10,000+ 5) After corporate reviews the "new" employee applications, they gather up the names and SSNs, which are sent off to some sort of verification system 6) An error is thrown out and sent back to corporate saying that the name and address doesn't match the SSN provided. Corporate waits to send this information for a few days/weeks, depending on how many they are processing at a given time 7) The store receives a rejection notification sometime later 8) Wait about 1 week or so until corporate starts complaining, return to step 1 Some of the guys I was working with had gone through this process for - no joke - at least 2 to 3 years. Since they were continually seen as "new" employees, there was no sort of issue with firing previous employees or anything like that. It also didn't hurt that different information was being provided each time. After all, corporate had no way of claiming that Jose Guzman at 123 fake street, with SSN 123-45-6789 was the same Jose Guzman at 123 fake street, with SSN 987-65-4321, since they didn't want to be accused of racism. It wasn't so much a problem to be resolved, as it is a "discrepancy" to be "corrected". The only correction needed was to have the "new" employee resubmit their application. On a side-note, I'm not exactly sure how any of this worked, but it also led to the "new" employees making about $3 per hour. I accidentally left a paycheck out at one point, and one of the Spanish guys saw it and flipped out, yelled to the other guys, and they all started flipping out too. I guess they were under the impression that minimum wage was whatever the managers told them it was? I felt bad for them, in a way, since they were working extremely long days, but they were also not paying any taxes, sleeping on the job, and would flee the country once their home was built back in their home country. Basically, they were treated poorly, but they were also standing to save up about a full decades worth of money by stealing from the country they broke into illegally. I don't really hold any hostility over them doing that, I just don't hold much sympathy either.

excitom 4y ago
You lost me at "stealing from the country they broke into illegally." I see people working hard to try to improve their and their families' lives. Surely the employer is deducting for income tax, SS tax, and medicare tax from their paychecks, and they will not see an income tax "refund" next April nor will they ever collect SS nor Medicare benefits. And if the employer is not making these deductions then who is doing the "stealing" exactly?
- imwillofficial 4y ago
  The people not paying the taxes after committing tax fraud? Also all the corp employees who facilities this fraud.
  - lazide 4y ago
    Wage workers generally have taxes withheld involuntarily, at least unless someone makes them manually override it. Interestingly, that seems to trigger the taxman to start looking, which is when folks get busted. It’s in some mentioned anecdotes and articles here. Even more interesting? If they instead just abandon the withheld taxes, no one seems interested in actually fixing the problem. It would be trivial to mandate employers do realtime submissions of the employment eligibility paperwork for instance, but it’s actually illegal to send it to anyone, or attempt to do anything more with that information (like have a service somewhere that tracks these things and notifies employers of obviously invalid cases like a SSN being used across 5 states for 50 different job applications at different employers at once). A cynical person would say it’s because as long as the people who need to be paid are getting paid, unskilled labor is cheap and easy to scare/boss around, illegal immigration is not actually a problem, but an opportunity for them.
  - 1659447091 4y ago
    Wouldn't it put them in tax exempt bracket if they are making $3/hr? Not an accountant so really not sure about these things, but thought under a certain amount, you don't pay taxes.
- 4y ago

KirillPanov 4y ago

> Upon investigation, it turned out that her name & SSN were being used simultaneously by more than 50 different workers in the meatpacking industry. How the fark does the IRS not notice when a single SSN gets W-2s from 50 different employers, each with a different payee name? All this stuff is completely computerized. Unlike tax returns, it is no longer possible to file W-2s on paper. You must file them electronically.

toast0 4y ago
>> her name & SSN were being used > each with a different payee name? Everyone was using the same name. There's no rule that says you can't be on 50 different payrolls.
Tangurena2 4y ago
The IRS & USCIS only get to do what Congress allows them to do. When corporate lobbyists want the IRS to crack down on illegal immigrant workers, then there will be an effective crackdown. Until then, it will be possible to (cheaply) use stolen identities to get jobs past online verification. Equifax - one of the huge credit reporting agencies - is trying to squeeze in to this space. https://theworknumber.com/ https://theworknumber.com/ Until then, Form I-9 gets filed on paper and that paper is kept in the employer's office. After 3 years, they can discard it. Nova Law Review article with some background of my original post: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/nlr/vol32/iss2/6/ https://nsuworks.nova.edu/nlr/vol32/iss2/6/ Department of Labor is upset that one of the consent decrees with Walmart gives them 15 day notice before any investigation of wages: https://www.oig.dol.gov/public/reports/oa/2006/04-06-001-04-420.pdf https://www.oig.dol.gov/public/reports/oa/2006/04-06-001-04-... I can't find the consent decree where Walmart gets advance notice of Immigration investigations. All of the primary links are dead. 30 or 60 day advance notice - this will prevent SWAT-style raids like those at the Swift meatpacking plants. Like the above one, if Walmart is "in compliance" when Immigration is allowed in the door, then they are exempt from fines & penalties. Walmart paid $11M in penalties for this one. Several of the blog posts reporting on the consent decree imply that the no-jail plus advance notice were a result of large campaign contributions to one political party along with political appointees interfering with enforcement actions. > Not a RICO case, but illustrates ICE efforts to hold companies responsible for their subcontractor’s violations. https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/work-visas/50104/immigration-law-enforcement-developments-contractor-liability-for-undocumented-subcontractor-employees https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/work-visas/50104/immigra... https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3345232 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3345232 > At the time of the raids, the government said they had wiretaps showing that Wal-Mart executives knew the company was using illegal workers. However, as part of the settlement the company will not admit any wrongdoing or liability. https://money.cnn.com/2005/03/18/news/fortune500/wal_mart_settlement/ https://money.cnn.com/2005/03/18/news/fortune500/wal_mart_se...

pwillia7 4y ago

I don't think it's the employer's legal duty to verify the validity of the SSN, just that it is provided. That kind of makes sense but it's a shame we have no system to actually validate that. It's probably on purpose so we can have immigration and workers for the jobs American's don't want to do but not seem like we're pro immigration on the political front

autoexec 4y ago
I don't think it's unreasonable to expect employers to not hire tens or hundreds of people using identical names and social security numbers. If it can be shown that an employer knew, or reasonably should have known, that they were employing illegal immigrants we should be throwing the book at them with full force. There are no jobs that Americans don't want to do. There are only jobs that Americans don't want to do at exploitative wages.
- pwillia7 4y ago
  I didn't mean morally -- I meant legally they do not have to verify the authenticity of the numbers. And I agree with you about the exploitative wages mostly, but I don't know what to do about it. So we pay real wages to migrant farm workers -- Even if we double subsidies for corn and whatnot, beef now costs 3X at the supermarket. In Texas, 1 in 5 children are hungry every day[1]. How do you do it so that more children aren't made less food safe and you don't cause riots/social unrest from exploding inflation? Sigh.... I wish we could at least all work on the problems instead of all the sloganeering always going on. Not to say you're doing that, it just feels like we can never have any kind of real conversation about what to do anymore -- Maybe it's just that no one is driving the bus anymore. Have a good day! [1]:https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/texas https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/texas