When I saw the headline MEATPACKING RAIDS: A VICTIM'S STORY, my first thought was that they were calling the illegals who got rounded up in Greeley, Colorado victims. But I was wrong, Bob Sullivan of MSNBC's Red Tape Chronicles has a story about an actual victim of identity theft:

Theresa Sanchez was expecting a $5,400 tax refund when she opened a letter from the IRS in January 2003. Instead, she got a bill demanding payment of taxes on $120,000 in undeclared wages. Someone using her name and Social Security number had earned the money through a series of jobs dating back to 1996 and had not paid any taxes on the income, the letter said.

Sanchez complained to the agency and to the Federal Trade Commission that her identity had been stolen, and was being used by someone to gain employment. Nonetheless, more than two years later, in April 2005, a woman walked into the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colo., and used Theresa Sanchez's name and Social Security number to get a job.

Want to know why it's so easy for illegals to use someone else's Social Security number? Because the government agencies involved don't care:

Government doesn't warn consumers

And over the entire 10-year span, federal agencies like the IRS and the Social Security Administration could have detected suspicious use of her Social Security number, since they were collecting taxes from multiple jobs at multiple locations. But it is not the policy of either agency to warn consumers that their number might have been been stolen.

[via Lonewacko Blog who has other examples of identity theft.]