Re: Getting a new identity & a new credit history

There is doubt in mine. Firstly, having an income doesn't necessarily mean that you have an income that can maintain regular necessary outgoings plus repayments at any reasonable level on £60,000 of debt. Second, changing one's name is not illegal and frankly, he could keep his own name and still not be able to repay the debt. The law even allows for the debt to become unenforceable after a period in which no payments on or acknowledgement of a debt is made. I accept that a proper course of action would be to do something positive about dealing with the debts, like consideration of bankruptcy or an IVA, but choosing not to address debts that one cant afford to pay is not fraud.

See:

Google groups URL or message ID please ?

Sorry, I misunderstood you. I thought you meant there should be checks on the handing out of birth certificates. Now I see you mean the passport office (or indeed anyone who accepts birth certificates as "proof" of identity) should check registers of deaths. That would be unworkable because they are not cross referenced, nor, I think, are the data from the thousands (hundreds at least) of registry offices amalgamated.

But Upper Bottomley could be in a different county (or whatever entity corresponds to a regitrar's catchment area) from Little Wibbley, so nobody would think of looking there.

At 14:49:36 on 03/01/2007, Ronald Raygun delighted uk.legal by announcing:

Your thought is incorrect.

As for cross-referencing, you start with the name. The age (or even DOB if 1969 or later, in which case you also have place) can be used to narrow down those results. Remember, it's not a method of prevention in itself, just an indication that further checks may be a good idea.

This is irrelevant thanks to the GRO, provided that the birth/death was registered at least 18 months ago.

Yeah right. How to steal £90k and get away with it:

Ask your bank for a £100k personal loan, to be repaid in 60 monthly instalments of about £2500. Make 4 payments and then scarper.

But you would never obtain such a loan without (either) security or being in such a good position as to not really need it. No one in eiither scenario is ever going to "scarper". :-)

"when issuing passport, check person isnt dead before proceeeding" would seem to be a start, ISTR a story about someone being caught trying this recently.

its there, search on O2 and location in The Register, it was the first hit when I tried it.

At 15:59:28 on 03/01/2007, Tumbleweed delighted uk.finance by announcing:

Although, whilst it's possible in some cases to determine that an applicant is dead, it's impossible to determine that every applicant is alive.

How do you check someone isn't dead? I can't be bothered to look out the family death certificates in my files but I'm fairly sure there is no date and/or place of birth on them. Indeed someone may die and his/her heirs have no idea of his/her DOB or POB.

At 18:38:21 on 03/01/2007, AlanG delighted uk.legal by announcing:

Were they born after 1969?

Unlikely in the classic case of the baby dying at 9 months old though! And having recently been through a 'death process' we had to declare where death occurred and the cause (xferred from doctors cert). Not sure if its on the certificate but its definitely registered.

No. What has that to do with it?

The situation would still be the same if the heirs had no knowledge of place or date of birth.

True but still possible

That's what we did.

Place and date of birth?

At 20:00:20 on 03/01/2007, Tumbleweed delighted uk.finance by announcing:

At 19:58:58 on 03/01/2007, Alex delighted uk.finance by announcing:

Or perhaps it's died after 1969.

At 20:16:25 on 03/01/2007, AlanG delighted uk.finance by announcing:

Everything.

As part of the death registration process you're asked for the place and date of birth.

Which isn't required if you don't know it