‘A golden rule: to leave an incomplete image of oneself.’ — Cioran
How to create the perfect fake identity.
Let me start off by saying that I’m making this whole thing up.
Imagine you’re in charge of infiltrating sleeper agents into the United States. The year is 1983, and the proliferation of identity databases is making it increasingly difficult to create fake credentials. Ten years ago, someone could have just shown up in the country and gotten a driver’s license, Social Security card and bank account — possibly using the identity of someone roughly the same age who died as a young child — but it’s getting harder. And you know that trend will only continue. So you decide to grow your own identities.
Call it “identity farming.” You invent a handful of infants. You apply for Social Security numbers for them. Eventually, you open bank accounts for them, file tax returns for them, register them to vote, and apply for credit cards in their name. And now, 25 years later, you have a handful of identities ready and waiting for some real people to step into them.
There are some complications, of course. Maybe you need people to sign their name as parents — or, at least, mothers. Maybe you need to doctors to fill out birth certificates. Maybe you need to fill out paperwork certifying that you’re home-schooling these children. You’ll certainly want to exercise their financial identity: depositing money into their bank accounts and withdrawing it from ATMs, using their credit cards and paying the bills, and so on. And you’ll need to establish some sort of addresses for them, even if it is just a mail drop.
