13 ms·

He went to jail for stealing someone's identity, but it was his all along

272 points by rawgabbit 2y ago

rawgabbit 2y ago
Gift. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/us/iowa-identity-theft-sentencing.html?unlocked_article_code=1.uE4.nDr5.FzmTHc1IOy25&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/us/iowa-identity-theft-se...
jjmarr 2y ago
> He was consistent and clear when he talked about his identity in California courtrooms as he tried to fight the charges on the grounds that he really was the man whose name he was accused of stealing. But Mr. Woods made other remarks that seemed to amplify the doubts. In court appearances, transcripts show, he would sometimes interrupt the judge, talk about historical figures or assert that he had tried to warn the F.B.I. in advance of the Sept. 11 attacks. I wonder how many people are telling the truth about something, and aren't taken seriously because they're problematic about something else.
- lylejantzi3rd 2y ago
  "I wonder how many people are telling the truth about something, and aren't taken seriously because they're problematic about something else." Isn't that everybody now? Credibility is a strange thing in the age of social media.
  - add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
    Evaluating things people say in the context of their general credibility and character is pretty evergreen.
  - orwin 2y ago
    No, i don't think so. I have an older friend that is persuaded to have seen something most people don't believe in back in the 90s. He just won't claim it publicly, and don't talk about it all the time, it's not a core part of his personality. Even if some people make fun of him for it (i don't think it happen nowadays, but it might), they can, and probably will believe him on other subjects (he is a very precise and knowledgeable in electronics, and have really interesting philosophical point of views).
- daseiner1 2y ago
  “problematic” being a rather charitable term here, I think
  - drawkward 2y ago
    What word would you use?
    - contravariant 2y ago
      Sounds schizophrenic at this stage.
      - drawkward 2y ago
        [flagged]
    - daseiner1 2y ago
      In contemporary parlance, “problematic” connotes to me that said individual expresses ideas, in their words, speech, or way of life, that are anathema to the dominant paradigm of thought/manners/civility, but does not necessarily imply anything about the mental health of the related individual. Disordered thinking of the quality you’ve described is indicative of a serious psychological unwellness that, as the other commenter suggested, suggests paranoid schizophrenia or a related form of psychosis. But I don’t intend to seriously engage in back-of-envelope psychologizing. Prattling on about irrelevant history and insinuating 9/11 conspiracy theories in a courtroom not at all concerned with either of those items does harm credibility, and I think rightfully. For reasons of both family and personal history I am genuinely sensitive to the phenomenon of the “deemed crazy” person being consigned to permanent non-consideration of their words and expressions, their concerns, but I also recognize that such legitimate unwellness poses genuine issues for the believability of anything they claim. Putting my extended aside aside, I would phrase it as “how many people are telling the truth about something, but aren't taken seriously because they're severely psychologically disregulated generally.” It’s not necessarily outrageous for me to assert that I warned the FBI about 9/11 in June 2000. It seriously harms my credibility if I decide to bring up this grievance when I’m speaking to a judge about my undeserved traffic ticket in October 2024.
- RobotToaster 2y ago
  Just because you're crazy doesn't mean you're wrong.
  - mchannon 2y ago
    The contrapositive of which is just because you’re right does not mean you are not crazy.
    - LoganDark 2y ago
      I was crazy once. Actually, maybe multiple times. Weirdly, whenever I'm not crazy I think I want to be crazy, and whenever I am crazy I just want it to stop. "I didn't ask for that crazy, I wanted a different crazy!!!"
      - Alive-in-2025 2y ago
        Can you explain. Like maybe you have a condition that causes some psychological challenges and then you get better and it goes away for a while? That would be horrible.
        LoganDark 2y ago
        I don't know if I have any actual condition. I probably have maybe 5 mental disorders but I don't think any of them cause actual crazy just on their own. Usually my crazy is induced by staying awake for unhealthy lengths of time. I think last time this happened I joked about being schizophrenic because I kept hearing things in silence and being incredibly agitated/panicked about it. I probably said the exact quote "I didn't want that schizophrenia I wanted a different schizophrenia!!!!" since sometimes I wonder what it would be like to actually be schizophrenic. (I wonder this about so many things, though generally people tell me that wondering this is not normal)
- bragr 2y ago
  I have a cousin who is paranoid schizophrenic. He makes all kinds of wild claims about all sorts of things: family abuse, screwed over by employers/landlords, beaten up by the police for no reason, the people living in the crawl space are poisoning him, etc, etc... Many of them are provably false e.g. those family members didn't live there at the time of the allegation, the body cam clearly shows him charging the police and then trying to grab their guns while they try to wrestle him into handcuffs, nobody in the crawl space, etc. The problem is that it'd take a full time detective to track down all his various claims. It's very sad that as a vulnerable person he probably is sometimes taken advantage of by people, but at the same time he's never been compliant with medicine and therapy for more than a couple months at a time, despite extensive support. It's kind of a no win situation.
  - honestSysAdmin 2y ago
    [dead]
  - 542354234235 2y ago
    It is a weird twist on the fairy tale. What if you had a medical condition that compelled you to cry “Wolf” all the time? Obviously the townsfolk can’t spend all their time responding to false wolf sightings, but there is no lessoned to be learned when The Boy actually believes he sees a wolf every day.
    - gunian 2y ago
      the guy from that story was lucky they even responded once
  - asveikau 2y ago
    I have been close to multiple people who made similar paranoid allegations while psychotic. It is sometimes hard for people to understand the allegations are false or part of an illness. This can include judges and mental health professionals.
  - RobotToaster 2y ago
    Shouldn't he be on a long acting injection?
- thih9 2y ago
  > or assert that he had tried to warn the F.B.I. in advance of the Sept. 11 attacks That’s a very long shot but I now want someone to verify this claim too, in case he was also telling the truth.
  - ykonstant 2y ago
    Imagine if some member of the bin Laden family was high on something and had rumors of their cousin's shenanigans and were spilling them out on some IRC channel or BBS or whatever, and that guy happened upon them and tried to alert the police, only to be dismissed as a lunatic and end up in prison for unrelated reasons while the disaster happened. That would be a true Kafkian nightmare.
- ty6853 2y ago
  I was once dragged to a hospital by police because they were looking for a drug smuggler that was not me. They told hospital staff I was a druggie criminal with drugs up my ass, as I sat there in cuffs. It is incredibly hard to overcome such accusation by someone in authority. Nurses cursed me, touched me without consent, and several doctors examined me. They ultimately found nothing, and noted no intoxication, but noted in my medical record that they think i am a smuggler anyway, with no explanation as to why. I am now in medical debt for a non-existent 'overdose' bill that notes no intoxication... I imagine as soon as some official person insists the identity isn't yours, just as multiple doctors wouldn't believe despite all evidence to contrary, they won't believe you.
  - mlinhares 2y ago
    Being skeptical about authority figures is always a good thing, it always surprise me to see populations so deferent to them like americans are to law enforcement.
    - nadermx 2y ago
      Law enforcement in the US has a license to kill with paid leave after. The fear that instills in an entire populace is chilling.
      - cm2012 2y ago
        80% of Americans like the police. https://www.lexipol.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/polls-favorable-unfavorable-view-of-police-bar.png https://www.lexipol.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/polls-fav...
        redleggedfrog 2y ago
        1 in 5 Americans don't like the police.
        pjc50 2y ago
        Yes, because they assume that the license to kill with paid leave will be used against someone they don't like. It's a real "fix your hearts" situation. Watch this play out in the current fiasco with USAID.
- garciasn 2y ago
  This is how divorce goes now based on my experience. The legal system is not setup to handle these sorts of problems well and leaves the innocent to deal with the fall out of bad actors and lawyers who empower them. This won’t be corrected until there are penalties for political, legal, and administrative professionals who don’t do their due diligence.
  - kylebenzle 2y ago
    Yes! This is divorce in America right now, if one party is willing to make up a series of lies, no matter how unbelievable the court will just default to the one making the accusations because its too much work to even try to sort out truth from lie, thats why the lawyers call it, "Liars Court" because the biggest liar wins.
    - giantg2 2y ago
      Even many of the lawyers encourage it with stuff like suggesting filing baseless protection orders.
    - latency-guy2 2y ago
      The standard for the judicial is not "the truth", its about what you can "prove". Judicial cannot claim one party is lying or not, in fact it is impossible, given the fact its nearly always a "he said she said" deal (in this particular scenario). Quite literally, the judge was't there, lawyers weren't there either and they get a twisted version of truth no matter if they are prosecuting or defense. It sucks, fully agreed, but there is no way around it. As long as the judgement is not too punitive is about the best you can hope for.
      - CPLX 2y ago
        > The standard for the judicial is not "the truth", its about what you can "prove". It's not though. Completely unprovable allegations by a single person have real consequences. That's just the way the system works.
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  I wonder the same but I also firmly believe it's a useless and unproductive thing to worry about. I mean, I wonder how many gold coins are laying in the forest? Surely there are many, and you can find ample news stories of people locating them out there, but I can confidently tell you that if you assembled a team an combed the forest for a year, maybe you would find one object worthy of a news story. And definitely you would wasted thousands of man hours that could have produced far far far more than what the object is worth.
  - fwip 2y ago
    Is it? There's a sibling comment to yours about somebody who went through this - seems like the rate is higher than the "gold coin in the woods."
    - Workaccount2 2y ago
      I'm surprised there is only one. There are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people who view posts on here. If I searched ten thousand forests, I'd be hopeful for more than a single coin.
      - robertlagrant 2y ago
        You seem to have switched what you're saying to "it's not many gold coins in one forest; it's at least one gold coin in many forests". Or rather, you now seem to think it's pretty likely that lots of people have this happen to them.
        Workaccount2 2y ago
        In absolute terms, it happens to many people. In practical terms, it happens to virtually no one. Hundreds of people win $10,000+ in the lottery every month. That is a lot of people. You can post a thread and will likely get comments from those who have won before. But as a percentage of the population, virtually no one wins big in the lottery. If you are foolish and think social media accurately portrays reality, you might quit your job to play the lottery full time - because hey, look at all the winners in the comments.
- heavyset_go 2y ago
  This is just the system getting rid of (in their eyes) an undesirable. The truth doesn't really matter in these cases unless you have tens of thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer to plead your case.
- Almondsetat 2y ago
  >I wonder how many people are telling the truth about something, and aren't taken seriously because they're problematic about something else. (Un)fortunately, there is a quite famous experiment >The Rosenhan experiment or Thud experiment was an experiment regarding the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. For the experiment, participants submitted themselves for evaluation at various psychiatric institutions and feigned hallucinations in order to be accepted, but acted normally from then onward. Each was diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder and given antipsychotic medication.
  - gpt5 2y ago
    "The meds are working"
  - debugnik 2y ago
    > For the experiment, participants submitted themselves for evaluation at various psychiatric institutions How did anyone volunteer for this? Isn't there a risk of actually getting stuck at the asylum, or failing to clarify it was an experiment to have it removed from your records?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- sixothree 2y ago
  Having grown up in the Deep South, I feel like every single person in the justice system from police to judge make decisions about you based on how you look and subconsciously decide to not believe facts or allow weak facts to have more weight. Nothing about this question seems outrageous to me whatsoever. And I think that’s the shocking part here.
- speakspokespok 2y ago
  The literal moral of "The boy who cries Wolf"? Liars are not believed even when they tell the truth. ... probably all of them.
- SecretDreams 2y ago
  > I wonder how many people are telling the truth about something, and aren't taken seriously because they're problematic about something else. Likely a metric fuck ton. The perceived quality of one's character plays an outsized role in getting people to believe you. Serial killers figured that out a long time ago.
- saghm 2y ago
  I'm not sure that being "problematic" was the issue here; it sounds more like they might have thought he wasn't fully sane. I could imagine thinking that someone fully believed what they said about their identity in the same way they believed that they could have stopped 9/11 if people had listened to them beforehand. The issue isn't thinking they have bad takes or unsavory opinions, but that they have trouble distinguishing reality from delusions.
- interludead 2y ago
  This is how these institutions work. If someone behaves erratically, holds unconventional beliefs or just doesn't present themselves in the "right" way, they can be dismissed entirely
- draw_down 2y ago
  [dead]
rjbwork 2y ago
Lehto's Law did a video on this recently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zewe9DWLEG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zewe9DWLEG8
- RandomBacon 2y ago
  I listen to his shows when I'm driving, but just be advised he is long-winded – repeating himself many times about the same thing.
  - Suppafly 2y ago
    >I listen to his shows when I'm driving, but just be advised he is long-winded – repeating himself many times about the same thing. I think you've identified why I don't particularly like his videos. His takes are usually interesting and they are usually interesting cases, but he spends 10 minutes talking about something that is worth 2 minutes at best.
    - p_ing 2y ago
      10 minutes is about what the YT algorithm requires.
      - Suppafly 2y ago
        It really sucks that the way to make money through youtube is to constantly adjust your videos to whatever pays best according to the algorithm that shifts and changes.
      - sumtechguy 2y ago
        speed 2x to the rescue!
      - shagie 2y ago
        I've seen that with some videos (and understand it to be the case with the algorithm). There are a number of channels that I have put in the "don't recommend from these channels" because it's two minutes of content five times over (I'd rather watch a 2 minute short form on the mater). It's content that I'm potentially interested in... but that particular format irks me.
Dylan16807 2y ago
You know, there's a good chance that if so many important institutions didn't insist on having your life history, the guy that stole his identity wouldn't have stolen it. Even if he takes the name, two people can have the same name. It depends on where his motive was in the scale from fresh start to deranged and malicious. And no, I'm not excusing his later actions.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  It looks like, from the article, his motive was "to escape responsibility from crimes he was accused of when he was young." It's utterly bonkers that running afoul of the law as a child can and still does affect people's lives decades later. The Criminal Justice System needs a graceful way to leave the past in the past and let minor crimes done long in someone's past age out of relevance.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    When he first started using someone else's identity, the crimes might not have been "long in the past" yet, but once you start doing something like that and have established a life under the assumed identity, it's not easy to go back. The real problem here is the attempt to maintain permanent one-to-one mappings between ID numbers and humans. The legitimate purpose of a government ID is so you can e.g. go to the bank, open an account and then later establish to the bank that you're the same person who opened the account. If you want to get a new ID number and start over, you shouldn't have to steal someone else's in order to do that, you should just be able to go to the DMV or the social security administration and get a new ID under a new name that isn't already somebody else's. The hypothesis that this would help criminals is pretty thin. They're already going to use an assumed name, which is why law enforcement uses photos/fingerprints/DNA to identify suspects rather than a government ID that people aren't actually required to carry regardless.
    - tuna74 2y ago
      No, you should have an actual ID number that can be used to uniquely identify people. Like Sweden for example.
gs17 2y ago
> But unlike the other investigators, Detective Mallory arranged for DNA tests of Mr. Woods’s father in Kentucky — whose identity was certain — and of Mr. Woods, who was then spending time at a shelter in Santa Monica, Calif. A comparison of the results showed that the California man was telling the truth. It's really absurd they didn't do something like this in the first place. I'm presuming there was no living family that could tell them which man is which.
- move-on-by 2y ago
  I don’t understand why a DNA test was even needed. Could his father not have identified him? How did it even get to this level?
  - forgetfreeman 2y ago
    How it got to this level, abridged: a generic lack of accountability, shit work ethic, and qualified immunity.
    - unyttigfjelltol 2y ago
      Well even the NYT didn't state the names of the prosecutor and judge that got this so egregiously and unforgivably wrong. Name and shame would be a start.
      - forgetfreeman 2y ago
        I mean, that at least sounds good, but in fact that would not be a start as it has no possible impact on these individuals on a personal or professional level.
      - Terr_ 2y ago
        I haven't found names or docket-stuff, but this page has more details like exact dates that may help someone with the right databases. > On October 31, 2019, the District Attorney’s office filed charges of identity theft and false impersonation against Woods. On December 23, 2019, Woods’s public defender expressed concern over Woods’s mental competence because he kept insisting that he was the real William Woods. > On February 10, 2020, following an examination by a physician, Woods was declared incompetent to stand trial and was sent to a California mental hospital for treatment, including psychotropic medication. https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=6790 https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedeta...
Jolter 2y ago
Hot take: Yet another case of wrongdoing that could have been prevented if the U.S. (or its states) held a canonical registry of people. If you couldn’t take out an ID card using a birth certificate and proof of residence (electricity bill etc weak measures), maybe this con would never have begun in the first place. Almost every developed nation in the world has this problem solved.
- rtkwe 2y ago
  Where has actually solved identity theft? I'm not aware of any country where it's impossible.
  - Jolter 2y ago
    Strawman. Nobody claimed it was impossible. My point is that this new item (and others) make identity theft seem so extremely easy in the U.S. You just have to be determined. Doesn't take any particular skill to forge an electricity bill, doesn't take any skill to give someone else's social security number (which many apparent morons presume are secret), etc. By moving the posts from "trivial" to "somewhat challenging", I think the U.S. would be better off. As an example: If I wanted to assume a new identity in Sweden, to get rid of my criminal history, I'd have to make a very convincing fake I.D. card, and make sure to find a "victim" who is not going to sound the alarm when they notice. Basically, as soon as you register their name on your address, a confirmation letter will be sent to that person, which makes it so they can dispute it. You could probably get away with it if you can find someone who moved abroad and forgot to notify the authorities. Even then, you'd have a really hard time getting a new passport or ID card in their name. It might work if you look a lot like them, and can drag their spouse, parent or sibling to the police station and have them vouch for you (with a valid ID card). I admit it's not impossible! But it certainly is not a thing that you ever hear about on the news.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      > Basically, as soon as you register their name on your address, a confirmation letter will be sent to that person, which makes it so they can dispute it. That doesn't seem relevant to the homeless man in question.
balderdash 2y ago
It’s ridiculous that no one will be held accountable here (prosectors, police, public defender, etc) other than the guy that stole his identity.
- Jolter 2y ago
  How about the government, for failing to provide their citizens with the security of a proper government issued ID?
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    We have these little things called elections for doing that. Parts of the government would love to have this perfect registry and things like RealID are attempts at that but there's a lot of push back and reasons not to have some mythical impervious citizen tracking system too.
    - Jolter 2y ago
      Sorry, what, elections are for doing what exactly? Not provide a registry of residence, surely. Your second sentence builds up two strawmen: 1. That the registry has to be "perfect", whatever that means. It doesn't, it just has to be canonical, and allow for errors in it to be corrected according to some well-defined process. (Not by pulling 20 random documents in front of a judge and suddenly legally become another person.) 2. That these registries are "mythical". It's very much a solved problem. You (I'm assuming you're American) are literally living the only developed country without a registry of who lives in it. Japan solves this by having the registry in your town of birth, other countries have this registry centralized -- perhaps the U.S. would be best served by state-wide registries, though since migration across state borders is unregulated, I bet that would be very difficult to maintain. As for the reasons not to have such a registry, I have yet to hear any convincing ones.
      - rtkwe 2y ago
        You asked about holding the government accountable for not providing secure IDs. Doing that is a political question and we've had attempts to for thinkgs like RealID, they don't because there's a significant block that don't want them to for all sort of reasons ranging from legitimate to paranoid. > Japan solves this by having the registry in your town of birth, other countries have this registry centralized -- perhaps the U.S. would be best served by state-wide registries, though since migration across state borders is unregulated, I bet that would be very difficult to maintain. You're just describing birth certificates here. The US has those... very very few people don't get them. Getting access to them was an important part of Keirans's method of stealing Mr. Woods's identity. They will inevitably get lost or destroyed so you have to have some method of bootstrapping someone's identity and Keirans exploited that system through research. It was designed around a time when it wasn't easy to acquire massive amounts of information about someone so it's not surprising that it starts to come apart a little bit in our digital panopticon.
croes 2y ago
Previous discussion about that case from 10 month ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39938005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39938005
- dang 2y ago
  Thanks! Macroexpanded: Former University of Iowa hospital employee used fake identity for 35 years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39938005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39938005 - April 2024 (377 comments)
gunian 2y ago
anyone know why the guy couldn't use his own identity? when i first saw this i thought maybe it was immigration etc but seemed like both are americans of european descent the US is usually amenable
- rtkwe 2y ago
  > Mr. Woods was held without bail on charges that he had illegally tried to gain access to bank accounts that Mr. Keirans had opened in Mr. Woods’s name. Then > Prosecutors in Los Angeles asked the judge to order Mr. Woods not to use his name. because as far as the court and the prosecutors had deigned to investigate Mr. Woods was in fact the identity thief.
- neaden 2y ago
  When Keirans first stole the identity in the 80s he bought a car with bad checks and got a job at a fast food place. Keirans had already had a run in with the law for car theft so working under a false name made some sense. From then on it seems like it just snowballed.
  - gunian 2y ago
    thats crazy it seems a lot harder to forge identity than to work and pay off loans and expunge misdemeanor if no politics / employment stuff esp if you already got a fast food gig i wonder if it was a temp thing or planned this way why not switch to a new identity after that instead of charging crazy story so many questions to both parties
mkl 2y ago
https://archive.ph/QZzLG https://archive.ph/QZzLG
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
michael1999 2y ago
I wish the times would just call this "identity fraud" instead of "theft". That mindset of "theft" creates a reverse-onus, while "identity fraud" makes it clear who should bear the risk.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  Ye the power of language. The bank giving its money to someone else and charging me is somehow my fault.
  - michael1999 2y ago
    Exactly. The crime is fraud on the bank. Nothing was stolen from me.
    - rightbyte 2y ago
      Imagine if the banks handed out pieces of plastic with a number printed on that anyone could use to withdraw money and that you were expected to hand it over to strangers especially when intoxicated. Bank are just a social construct that we pay alot of real money for.
      - michael1999 2y ago
        To be fair, that's because US payment culture is depraved. The rest of the world has got chip+PIN, and tap. My card almost never leaves my wallet, much less my hands. Only the USA still does the insane thing of walking away with the card and returning with signature slips. Blows my mind when I visit.
        rightbyte 2y ago
        Ye sure, but it took quite some time. I think you still can do number only withdrawals but the banks are reluctant to approve them due to scams. I think I signed a receit like 5 years ago when I said I forgot my pin. I don't get the CVC number. Was it added becouse it was not copied by the old card receit copy machines? Like, it is just a number on the other side of the card.
jokoon 2y ago
So apparently, just find somebody who is homeless, vulnerable, similar age and face, and this seems easy to repeat.
nullc 2y ago
Why was the law involved in any of this in the first place? Had Woods not been charged with identity theft in the first place Keirans' crime would have been victimless.
- pavel_lishin 2y ago
  > On Friday, Judge Williams said that Mr. Keirans’s motive was clear: He had adopted the false identity, the judge said, to escape responsibility from crimes he was accused of when he was young. Mr. Keirans had run away from home as a teenager, stolen a car and skipped court after an arrest, his plea agreement says. Oh, sure - misrepresenting who you are to businesses, law enforcement, potential partners. Regular victimless stuff.
  - nullc 2y ago
    In the US you can just adopt a new name, so long as you're not doing it for a fraudulent purpose (and obviously not by stealing someone elses identity). In this case, sure, he was ... _in the 1970s_. The initial name change was a crime but it was not a particularly significant one and it was a very long time ago. It appears that the ongoing modern use was completely harmless except for the fact that the real owner of the name was brought into the legal system over it. But why did that happen? You don't have to agree with my view on the identity theft to recognize that the question of why the real Mr. Woods was put under the thumb of the law is an interesting and relevant one.
fortran77 2y ago
There are several judges that need to be removed from their positions and disbarred.
interludead 2y ago
Wow.. The fact that the system repeatedly failed the actual William Woods at every turn, despite his persistence, is infuriating
tartoran 2y ago
This is so kafkian and am afraid the same story will likely repeat multiple times until addressed.
nullbyte808 2y ago
Pretty ghetto, he could have just spent $50 bucks and changed his name instead of stealing someone else's.

272 points by rawgabbit 2y ago

Gift. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/us/iowa-identity-theft-sentencing.html?unlocked_article_code=1.uE4.nDr5.FzmTHc1IOy25&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/us/iowa-identity-theft-se...

jjmarr 2y ago

> He was consistent and clear when he talked about his identity in California courtrooms as he tried to fight the charges on the grounds that he really was the man whose name he was accused of stealing. But Mr. Woods made other remarks that seemed to amplify the doubts. In court appearances, transcripts show, he would sometimes interrupt the judge, talk about historical figures or assert that he had tried to warn the F.B.I. in advance of the Sept. 11 attacks. I wonder how many people are telling the truth about something, and aren't taken seriously because they're problematic about something else.

lylejantzi3rd 2y ago
"I wonder how many people are telling the truth about something, and aren't taken seriously because they're problematic about something else." Isn't that everybody now? Credibility is a strange thing in the age of social media.
- add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
  Evaluating things people say in the context of their general credibility and character is pretty evergreen.
- orwin 2y ago
  No, i don't think so. I have an older friend that is persuaded to have seen something most people don't believe in back in the 90s. He just won't claim it publicly, and don't talk about it all the time, it's not a core part of his personality. Even if some people make fun of him for it (i don't think it happen nowadays, but it might), they can, and probably will believe him on other subjects (he is a very precise and knowledgeable in electronics, and have really interesting philosophical point of views).
daseiner1 2y ago
“problematic” being a rather charitable term here, I think
- drawkward 2y ago
  What word would you use?
  - contravariant 2y ago
    Sounds schizophrenic at this stage.
    - drawkward 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - daseiner1 2y ago
    In contemporary parlance, “problematic” connotes to me that said individual expresses ideas, in their words, speech, or way of life, that are anathema to the dominant paradigm of thought/manners/civility, but does not necessarily imply anything about the mental health of the related individual. Disordered thinking of the quality you’ve described is indicative of a serious psychological unwellness that, as the other commenter suggested, suggests paranoid schizophrenia or a related form of psychosis. But I don’t intend to seriously engage in back-of-envelope psychologizing. Prattling on about irrelevant history and insinuating 9/11 conspiracy theories in a courtroom not at all concerned with either of those items does harm credibility, and I think rightfully. For reasons of both family and personal history I am genuinely sensitive to the phenomenon of the “deemed crazy” person being consigned to permanent non-consideration of their words and expressions, their concerns, but I also recognize that such legitimate unwellness poses genuine issues for the believability of anything they claim. Putting my extended aside aside, I would phrase it as “how many people are telling the truth about something, but aren't taken seriously because they're severely psychologically disregulated generally.” It’s not necessarily outrageous for me to assert that I warned the FBI about 9/11 in June 2000. It seriously harms my credibility if I decide to bring up this grievance when I’m speaking to a judge about my undeserved traffic ticket in October 2024.
RobotToaster 2y ago
Just because you're crazy doesn't mean you're wrong.
- mchannon 2y ago
  The contrapositive of which is just because you’re right does not mean you are not crazy.
  - LoganDark 2y ago
    I was crazy once. Actually, maybe multiple times. Weirdly, whenever I'm not crazy I think I want to be crazy, and whenever I am crazy I just want it to stop. "I didn't ask for that crazy, I wanted a different crazy!!!"
    - Alive-in-2025 2y ago
      Can you explain. Like maybe you have a condition that causes some psychological challenges and then you get better and it goes away for a while? That would be horrible.
      - LoganDark 2y ago
        I don't know if I have any actual condition. I probably have maybe 5 mental disorders but I don't think any of them cause actual crazy just on their own. Usually my crazy is induced by staying awake for unhealthy lengths of time. I think last time this happened I joked about being schizophrenic because I kept hearing things in silence and being incredibly agitated/panicked about it. I probably said the exact quote "I didn't want that schizophrenia I wanted a different schizophrenia!!!!" since sometimes I wonder what it would be like to actually be schizophrenic. (I wonder this about so many things, though generally people tell me that wondering this is not normal)
bragr 2y ago
I have a cousin who is paranoid schizophrenic. He makes all kinds of wild claims about all sorts of things: family abuse, screwed over by employers/landlords, beaten up by the police for no reason, the people living in the crawl space are poisoning him, etc, etc... Many of them are provably false e.g. those family members didn't live there at the time of the allegation, the body cam clearly shows him charging the police and then trying to grab their guns while they try to wrestle him into handcuffs, nobody in the crawl space, etc. The problem is that it'd take a full time detective to track down all his various claims. It's very sad that as a vulnerable person he probably is sometimes taken advantage of by people, but at the same time he's never been compliant with medicine and therapy for more than a couple months at a time, despite extensive support. It's kind of a no win situation.
- honestSysAdmin 2y ago
  [dead]
- 542354234235 2y ago
  It is a weird twist on the fairy tale. What if you had a medical condition that compelled you to cry “Wolf” all the time? Obviously the townsfolk can’t spend all their time responding to false wolf sightings, but there is no lessoned to be learned when The Boy actually believes he sees a wolf every day.
  - gunian 2y ago
    the guy from that story was lucky they even responded once
- asveikau 2y ago
  I have been close to multiple people who made similar paranoid allegations while psychotic. It is sometimes hard for people to understand the allegations are false or part of an illness. This can include judges and mental health professionals.
- RobotToaster 2y ago
  Shouldn't he be on a long acting injection?
thih9 2y ago
> or assert that he had tried to warn the F.B.I. in advance of the Sept. 11 attacks That’s a very long shot but I now want someone to verify this claim too, in case he was also telling the truth.
- ykonstant 2y ago
  Imagine if some member of the bin Laden family was high on something and had rumors of their cousin's shenanigans and were spilling them out on some IRC channel or BBS or whatever, and that guy happened upon them and tried to alert the police, only to be dismissed as a lunatic and end up in prison for unrelated reasons while the disaster happened. That would be a true Kafkian nightmare.
ty6853 2y ago
I was once dragged to a hospital by police because they were looking for a drug smuggler that was not me. They told hospital staff I was a druggie criminal with drugs up my ass, as I sat there in cuffs. It is incredibly hard to overcome such accusation by someone in authority. Nurses cursed me, touched me without consent, and several doctors examined me. They ultimately found nothing, and noted no intoxication, but noted in my medical record that they think i am a smuggler anyway, with no explanation as to why. I am now in medical debt for a non-existent 'overdose' bill that notes no intoxication... I imagine as soon as some official person insists the identity isn't yours, just as multiple doctors wouldn't believe despite all evidence to contrary, they won't believe you.
- mlinhares 2y ago
  Being skeptical about authority figures is always a good thing, it always surprise me to see populations so deferent to them like americans are to law enforcement.
  - nadermx 2y ago
    Law enforcement in the US has a license to kill with paid leave after. The fear that instills in an entire populace is chilling.
    - cm2012 2y ago
      80% of Americans like the police. https://www.lexipol.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/polls-favorable-unfavorable-view-of-police-bar.png https://www.lexipol.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/polls-fav...
      - redleggedfrog 2y ago
        1 in 5 Americans don't like the police.
      - pjc50 2y ago
        Yes, because they assume that the license to kill with paid leave will be used against someone they don't like. It's a real "fix your hearts" situation. Watch this play out in the current fiasco with USAID.
garciasn 2y ago
This is how divorce goes now based on my experience. The legal system is not setup to handle these sorts of problems well and leaves the innocent to deal with the fall out of bad actors and lawyers who empower them. This won’t be corrected until there are penalties for political, legal, and administrative professionals who don’t do their due diligence.
- kylebenzle 2y ago
  Yes! This is divorce in America right now, if one party is willing to make up a series of lies, no matter how unbelievable the court will just default to the one making the accusations because its too much work to even try to sort out truth from lie, thats why the lawyers call it, "Liars Court" because the biggest liar wins.
  - giantg2 2y ago
    Even many of the lawyers encourage it with stuff like suggesting filing baseless protection orders.
  - latency-guy2 2y ago
    The standard for the judicial is not "the truth", its about what you can "prove". Judicial cannot claim one party is lying or not, in fact it is impossible, given the fact its nearly always a "he said she said" deal (in this particular scenario). Quite literally, the judge was't there, lawyers weren't there either and they get a twisted version of truth no matter if they are prosecuting or defense. It sucks, fully agreed, but there is no way around it. As long as the judgement is not too punitive is about the best you can hope for.
    - CPLX 2y ago
      > The standard for the judicial is not "the truth", its about what you can "prove". It's not though. Completely unprovable allegations by a single person have real consequences. That's just the way the system works.
Workaccount2 2y ago
I wonder the same but I also firmly believe it's a useless and unproductive thing to worry about. I mean, I wonder how many gold coins are laying in the forest? Surely there are many, and you can find ample news stories of people locating them out there, but I can confidently tell you that if you assembled a team an combed the forest for a year, maybe you would find one object worthy of a news story. And definitely you would wasted thousands of man hours that could have produced far far far more than what the object is worth.
- fwip 2y ago
  Is it? There's a sibling comment to yours about somebody who went through this - seems like the rate is higher than the "gold coin in the woods."
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    I'm surprised there is only one. There are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people who view posts on here. If I searched ten thousand forests, I'd be hopeful for more than a single coin.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      You seem to have switched what you're saying to "it's not many gold coins in one forest; it's at least one gold coin in many forests". Or rather, you now seem to think it's pretty likely that lots of people have this happen to them.
      - Workaccount2 2y ago
        In absolute terms, it happens to many people. In practical terms, it happens to virtually no one. Hundreds of people win $10,000+ in the lottery every month. That is a lot of people. You can post a thread and will likely get comments from those who have won before. But as a percentage of the population, virtually no one wins big in the lottery. If you are foolish and think social media accurately portrays reality, you might quit your job to play the lottery full time - because hey, look at all the winners in the comments.
heavyset_go 2y ago
This is just the system getting rid of (in their eyes) an undesirable. The truth doesn't really matter in these cases unless you have tens of thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer to plead your case.
Almondsetat 2y ago
>I wonder how many people are telling the truth about something, and aren't taken seriously because they're problematic about something else. (Un)fortunately, there is a quite famous experiment >The Rosenhan experiment or Thud experiment was an experiment regarding the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. For the experiment, participants submitted themselves for evaluation at various psychiatric institutions and feigned hallucinations in order to be accepted, but acted normally from then onward. Each was diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder and given antipsychotic medication.
- gpt5 2y ago
  "The meds are working"
- debugnik 2y ago
  > For the experiment, participants submitted themselves for evaluation at various psychiatric institutions How did anyone volunteer for this? Isn't there a risk of actually getting stuck at the asylum, or failing to clarify it was an experiment to have it removed from your records?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
sixothree 2y ago
Having grown up in the Deep South, I feel like every single person in the justice system from police to judge make decisions about you based on how you look and subconsciously decide to not believe facts or allow weak facts to have more weight. Nothing about this question seems outrageous to me whatsoever. And I think that’s the shocking part here.
speakspokespok 2y ago
The literal moral of "The boy who cries Wolf"? Liars are not believed even when they tell the truth. ... probably all of them.
SecretDreams 2y ago
> I wonder how many people are telling the truth about something, and aren't taken seriously because they're problematic about something else. Likely a metric fuck ton. The perceived quality of one's character plays an outsized role in getting people to believe you. Serial killers figured that out a long time ago.
saghm 2y ago
I'm not sure that being "problematic" was the issue here; it sounds more like they might have thought he wasn't fully sane. I could imagine thinking that someone fully believed what they said about their identity in the same way they believed that they could have stopped 9/11 if people had listened to them beforehand. The issue isn't thinking they have bad takes or unsavory opinions, but that they have trouble distinguishing reality from delusions.
interludead 2y ago
This is how these institutions work. If someone behaves erratically, holds unconventional beliefs or just doesn't present themselves in the "right" way, they can be dismissed entirely
draw_down 2y ago
[dead]

rjbwork 2y ago

Lehto's Law did a video on this recently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zewe9DWLEG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zewe9DWLEG8

RandomBacon 2y ago
I listen to his shows when I'm driving, but just be advised he is long-winded – repeating himself many times about the same thing.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  >I listen to his shows when I'm driving, but just be advised he is long-winded – repeating himself many times about the same thing. I think you've identified why I don't particularly like his videos. His takes are usually interesting and they are usually interesting cases, but he spends 10 minutes talking about something that is worth 2 minutes at best.
  - p_ing 2y ago
    10 minutes is about what the YT algorithm requires.
    - Suppafly 2y ago
      It really sucks that the way to make money through youtube is to constantly adjust your videos to whatever pays best according to the algorithm that shifts and changes.
    - sumtechguy 2y ago
      speed 2x to the rescue!
    - shagie 2y ago
      I've seen that with some videos (and understand it to be the case with the algorithm). There are a number of channels that I have put in the "don't recommend from these channels" because it's two minutes of content five times over (I'd rather watch a 2 minute short form on the mater). It's content that I'm potentially interested in... but that particular format irks me.

Dylan16807 2y ago

You know, there's a good chance that if so many important institutions didn't insist on having your life history, the guy that stole his identity wouldn't have stolen it. Even if he takes the name, two people can have the same name. It depends on where his motive was in the scale from fresh start to deranged and malicious. And no, I'm not excusing his later actions.

ryandrake 2y ago
It looks like, from the article, his motive was "to escape responsibility from crimes he was accused of when he was young." It's utterly bonkers that running afoul of the law as a child can and still does affect people's lives decades later. The Criminal Justice System needs a graceful way to leave the past in the past and let minor crimes done long in someone's past age out of relevance.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  When he first started using someone else's identity, the crimes might not have been "long in the past" yet, but once you start doing something like that and have established a life under the assumed identity, it's not easy to go back. The real problem here is the attempt to maintain permanent one-to-one mappings between ID numbers and humans. The legitimate purpose of a government ID is so you can e.g. go to the bank, open an account and then later establish to the bank that you're the same person who opened the account. If you want to get a new ID number and start over, you shouldn't have to steal someone else's in order to do that, you should just be able to go to the DMV or the social security administration and get a new ID under a new name that isn't already somebody else's. The hypothesis that this would help criminals is pretty thin. They're already going to use an assumed name, which is why law enforcement uses photos/fingerprints/DNA to identify suspects rather than a government ID that people aren't actually required to carry regardless.
  - tuna74 2y ago
    No, you should have an actual ID number that can be used to uniquely identify people. Like Sweden for example.

gs17 2y ago

> But unlike the other investigators, Detective Mallory arranged for DNA tests of Mr. Woods’s father in Kentucky — whose identity was certain — and of Mr. Woods, who was then spending time at a shelter in Santa Monica, Calif. A comparison of the results showed that the California man was telling the truth. It's really absurd they didn't do something like this in the first place. I'm presuming there was no living family that could tell them which man is which.

move-on-by 2y ago
I don’t understand why a DNA test was even needed. Could his father not have identified him? How did it even get to this level?
- forgetfreeman 2y ago
  How it got to this level, abridged: a generic lack of accountability, shit work ethic, and qualified immunity.
  - unyttigfjelltol 2y ago
    Well even the NYT didn't state the names of the prosecutor and judge that got this so egregiously and unforgivably wrong. Name and shame would be a start.
    - forgetfreeman 2y ago
      I mean, that at least sounds good, but in fact that would not be a start as it has no possible impact on these individuals on a personal or professional level.
    - Terr_ 2y ago
      I haven't found names or docket-stuff, but this page has more details like exact dates that may help someone with the right databases. > On October 31, 2019, the District Attorney’s office filed charges of identity theft and false impersonation against Woods. On December 23, 2019, Woods’s public defender expressed concern over Woods’s mental competence because he kept insisting that he was the real William Woods. > On February 10, 2020, following an examination by a physician, Woods was declared incompetent to stand trial and was sent to a California mental hospital for treatment, including psychotropic medication. https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=6790 https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedeta...

Jolter 2y ago

Hot take: Yet another case of wrongdoing that could have been prevented if the U.S. (or its states) held a canonical registry of people. If you couldn’t take out an ID card using a birth certificate and proof of residence (electricity bill etc weak measures), maybe this con would never have begun in the first place. Almost every developed nation in the world has this problem solved.

rtkwe 2y ago
Where has actually solved identity theft? I'm not aware of any country where it's impossible.
- Jolter 2y ago
  Strawman. Nobody claimed it was impossible. My point is that this new item (and others) make identity theft seem so extremely easy in the U.S. You just have to be determined. Doesn't take any particular skill to forge an electricity bill, doesn't take any skill to give someone else's social security number (which many apparent morons presume are secret), etc. By moving the posts from "trivial" to "somewhat challenging", I think the U.S. would be better off. As an example: If I wanted to assume a new identity in Sweden, to get rid of my criminal history, I'd have to make a very convincing fake I.D. card, and make sure to find a "victim" who is not going to sound the alarm when they notice. Basically, as soon as you register their name on your address, a confirmation letter will be sent to that person, which makes it so they can dispute it. You could probably get away with it if you can find someone who moved abroad and forgot to notify the authorities. Even then, you'd have a really hard time getting a new passport or ID card in their name. It might work if you look a lot like them, and can drag their spouse, parent or sibling to the police station and have them vouch for you (with a valid ID card). I admit it's not impossible! But it certainly is not a thing that you ever hear about on the news.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    > Basically, as soon as you register their name on your address, a confirmation letter will be sent to that person, which makes it so they can dispute it. That doesn't seem relevant to the homeless man in question.

balderdash 2y ago

It’s ridiculous that no one will be held accountable here (prosectors, police, public defender, etc) other than the guy that stole his identity.

Jolter 2y ago
How about the government, for failing to provide their citizens with the security of a proper government issued ID?
- rtkwe 2y ago
  We have these little things called elections for doing that. Parts of the government would love to have this perfect registry and things like RealID are attempts at that but there's a lot of push back and reasons not to have some mythical impervious citizen tracking system too.
  - Jolter 2y ago
    Sorry, what, elections are for doing what exactly? Not provide a registry of residence, surely. Your second sentence builds up two strawmen: 1. That the registry has to be "perfect", whatever that means. It doesn't, it just has to be canonical, and allow for errors in it to be corrected according to some well-defined process. (Not by pulling 20 random documents in front of a judge and suddenly legally become another person.) 2. That these registries are "mythical". It's very much a solved problem. You (I'm assuming you're American) are literally living the only developed country without a registry of who lives in it. Japan solves this by having the registry in your town of birth, other countries have this registry centralized -- perhaps the U.S. would be best served by state-wide registries, though since migration across state borders is unregulated, I bet that would be very difficult to maintain. As for the reasons not to have such a registry, I have yet to hear any convincing ones.
    - rtkwe 2y ago
      You asked about holding the government accountable for not providing secure IDs. Doing that is a political question and we've had attempts to for thinkgs like RealID, they don't because there's a significant block that don't want them to for all sort of reasons ranging from legitimate to paranoid. > Japan solves this by having the registry in your town of birth, other countries have this registry centralized -- perhaps the U.S. would be best served by state-wide registries, though since migration across state borders is unregulated, I bet that would be very difficult to maintain. You're just describing birth certificates here. The US has those... very very few people don't get them. Getting access to them was an important part of Keirans's method of stealing Mr. Woods's identity. They will inevitably get lost or destroyed so you have to have some method of bootstrapping someone's identity and Keirans exploited that system through research. It was designed around a time when it wasn't easy to acquire massive amounts of information about someone so it's not surprising that it starts to come apart a little bit in our digital panopticon.

croes 2y ago

Previous discussion about that case from 10 month ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39938005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39938005

dang 2y ago
Thanks! Macroexpanded: Former University of Iowa hospital employee used fake identity for 35 years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39938005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39938005 - April 2024 (377 comments)

gunian 2y ago

anyone know why the guy couldn't use his own identity? when i first saw this i thought maybe it was immigration etc but seemed like both are americans of european descent the US is usually amenable

rtkwe 2y ago
> Mr. Woods was held without bail on charges that he had illegally tried to gain access to bank accounts that Mr. Keirans had opened in Mr. Woods’s name. Then > Prosecutors in Los Angeles asked the judge to order Mr. Woods not to use his name. because as far as the court and the prosecutors had deigned to investigate Mr. Woods was in fact the identity thief.
neaden 2y ago
When Keirans first stole the identity in the 80s he bought a car with bad checks and got a job at a fast food place. Keirans had already had a run in with the law for car theft so working under a false name made some sense. From then on it seems like it just snowballed.
- gunian 2y ago
  thats crazy it seems a lot harder to forge identity than to work and pay off loans and expunge misdemeanor if no politics / employment stuff esp if you already got a fast food gig i wonder if it was a temp thing or planned this way why not switch to a new identity after that instead of charging crazy story so many questions to both parties

mkl 2y ago

https://archive.ph/QZzLG https://archive.ph/QZzLG

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

michael1999 2y ago

I wish the times would just call this "identity fraud" instead of "theft". That mindset of "theft" creates a reverse-onus, while "identity fraud" makes it clear who should bear the risk.

rightbyte 2y ago
Ye the power of language. The bank giving its money to someone else and charging me is somehow my fault.
- michael1999 2y ago
  Exactly. The crime is fraud on the bank. Nothing was stolen from me.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Imagine if the banks handed out pieces of plastic with a number printed on that anyone could use to withdraw money and that you were expected to hand it over to strangers especially when intoxicated. Bank are just a social construct that we pay alot of real money for.
    - michael1999 2y ago
      To be fair, that's because US payment culture is depraved. The rest of the world has got chip+PIN, and tap. My card almost never leaves my wallet, much less my hands. Only the USA still does the insane thing of walking away with the card and returning with signature slips. Blows my mind when I visit.
      - rightbyte 2y ago
        Ye sure, but it took quite some time. I think you still can do number only withdrawals but the banks are reluctant to approve them due to scams. I think I signed a receit like 5 years ago when I said I forgot my pin. I don't get the CVC number. Was it added becouse it was not copied by the old card receit copy machines? Like, it is just a number on the other side of the card.

jokoon 2y ago

So apparently, just find somebody who is homeless, vulnerable, similar age and face, and this seems easy to repeat.

nullc 2y ago

Why was the law involved in any of this in the first place? Had Woods not been charged with identity theft in the first place Keirans' crime would have been victimless.

pavel_lishin 2y ago
> On Friday, Judge Williams said that Mr. Keirans’s motive was clear: He had adopted the false identity, the judge said, to escape responsibility from crimes he was accused of when he was young. Mr. Keirans had run away from home as a teenager, stolen a car and skipped court after an arrest, his plea agreement says. Oh, sure - misrepresenting who you are to businesses, law enforcement, potential partners. Regular victimless stuff.
- nullc 2y ago
  In the US you can just adopt a new name, so long as you're not doing it for a fraudulent purpose (and obviously not by stealing someone elses identity). In this case, sure, he was ... _in the 1970s_. The initial name change was a crime but it was not a particularly significant one and it was a very long time ago. It appears that the ongoing modern use was completely harmless except for the fact that the real owner of the name was brought into the legal system over it. But why did that happen? You don't have to agree with my view on the identity theft to recognize that the question of why the real Mr. Woods was put under the thumb of the law is an interesting and relevant one.

fortran77 2y ago

There are several judges that need to be removed from their positions and disbarred.

interludead 2y ago

Wow.. The fact that the system repeatedly failed the actual William Woods at every turn, despite his persistence, is infuriating

tartoran 2y ago

This is so kafkian and am afraid the same story will likely repeat multiple times until addressed.

nullbyte808 2y ago

Pretty ghetto, he could have just spent $50 bucks and changed his name instead of stealing someone else's.