Maybe Gibbels could answer this too:
WASHINGTON, July 29, 2010
Probe: U.S. Passports Still Vulnerable to Fraud
Undercover Investigators Get Real Passports from Fake Documents; Highlights National Security Lapses
(AP) Posing as someone else and using fake birth certificates and driver’s licenses still can obtain official U.S. passports.
For the second time in two years, government investigators exploited a gaping hole in the U.S. security system by deliberately using fraudulent material to apply for U.S. passports.
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In a similar investigation in March 2009, government investigators used phony documents and the identities of a dead man and a 5-year-old boy to obtain U.S. passports. One investigator used the Social Security number of a man who died in 1965, a fake New York birth certificate and a fake Florida driver’s license. He received a passport four days later. In the latest ruse conducted between January and June of this year, investigators used a fake Florida birth certificate, fake West Virginia driver’s license and a recently issued Social Security number for a 62-year-old’s application. Cards for Social Security, the government agency to help retired Americans, normally are obtained when Americans are quite young, because every worker must pay into the system through the identifying number on the personalized card.
The same picture submitted with that application also was used for multiple applications under different names.
(snip)