Communicating How Your Firm Fights Synthetic Identities

(Updated question count 10/23/2023)

Does your firm fight crooks who try to fraudulently use synthetic identities? If so, how do you communicate your solution?

This post explains what synthetic identities are (with examples), tells four ways to detect synthetic identities, and closes by providing an answer to the communication question.

While this post is primarily intended for identity firms who can use Bredemarket’s marketing and writing services, anyone else who is interested in synthetic identities can read along.

What are synthetic identities?

To explain what synthetic identities are, let me start by telling you about Jason Brown.

Jason Brown wasn’t Jason Brown

You may not have heard of him unless you lived in Atlanta, Georgia in 2019 and lived near the apartment he rented.

Jason Brown’s renting of an apartment isn’t all that unusual.

If you were to visit Brown’s apartment in February 2019, you would find credit cards and financial information for Adam M. Lopez and Carlos Rivera.

Now that’s a little unusual, especially since Lopez and Rivera never existed.

For that matter, Jason Brown never existed either.

Brown was synthetically created from a stolen social security number and a fake California driver’s license. The creator was a man named Corey Cato, who was engaged in massive synthetic identity fraud. If you want to talk about a case that emphasizes the importance of determining financial identity, this is it.

A Georgia man was sentenced Sept. 1 (2022) to more than seven years in federal prison for participating in a nationwide fraud ring that used stolen social security numbers, including those belonging to children, to create synthetic identities used to open lines of credit, create shell companies, and steal nearly $2 million from financial institutions….

Cato joined conspiracies to defraud banks and illegally possess credit cards. Cato and his co-conspirators created “synthetic identities” by combining false personal information such as fake names and dates of birth with the information of real people, such as their social security numbers. Cato and others then used the synthetic identities and fake ID documents to open bank and credit card accounts at financial institutions. Cato and his co-conspirators used the unlawfully obtained credit cards to fund their lifestyles.

From https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/hsi-investigates-synthetic-identities-scheme-defrauded-banks-nearly-2m

Talking about synthetic identity at Victoria Gardens

Here’s a video that I created on Saturday that describes, at a very high level, how synthetic identities can be used fraudulently. People who live near Rancho Cucamonga, California will recognize the Victoria Gardens shopping center, proof that synthetic identity theft can occur far away from Georgia.

Note that synthetic identity theft different from stealing someone else’s existing identity. In this case, a new identity is created.

So how do you catch these fraudsters?

Catching the identity synthesizers

If you’re renting out an apartment, and Jason Brown shows you his driver’s license and provides his Social Security Number, how can you detect if Brown is a crook? There are four methods to verify that Jason Brown exists, and that he’s the person renting your apartment.

Method One: Private Databases

One way to check Jason Brown’s story is to perform credit checks and other data investigations using financial databases.

• Did Jason Brown just spring into existence within the past year, with no earlier credit record? That seems suspicious.
• Does Jason Brown’s credit record appear TOO clean? That seems suspicious.
• Does Jason Brown share information such as a common social security number with other people? Are any of those other identities also fraudulent? That is DEFINITELY suspicious.

This is one way that many firms detect synthetic identities, and for some firms it is the ONLY way they detect synthetic identities. And these firms have to tell their story to their prospects.

If your firm offers a tool to verify identities via private databases, how do you let your prospects know the benefits of your tool, and why your solution is better than all other solutions?

Method Two: Check That Driver’s License (or other government document)

What about that driver’s license that Brown presented? There are a wide variety of software tools that can check the authenticity of driver’s licenses, passports, and other government-issued documents. Some of these tools existed back in 2019 when “Brown” was renting his apartment, and a number of them exist today.

Maybe your firm has created such a tool, or uses a tool from a third party.

If your firm offers this capability, how can your prospects learn about its benefits, and why your solution excels?

Method Three: Check Government Databases

Checking the authenticity of a government-issued document may not be enough, since the document itself may be legitimate, but the implied credentials may no longer be legitimate. For example, if my California driver’s license expires in 2025, but I move to Minnesota in 2023 and get a new license, my California driver’s license is no longer valid, even though I have it in my possession.

Why not check the database of the Department of Motor Vehicles (or the equivalent in your state) to see if there is still an active driver’s license for that person?

The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) maintains a Driver’s License Data Verification (DLDV) Service in which participating jurisdictions allow other entities to verify the license data for individuals. Your firm may be able to access the DLDV data for selected jurisdictions, providing an extra identity verification tool.

If your firm offers this capability, how can your prospects learn where it is available, what its benefits are, and why it is an important part of your solution?

Method Four: Conduct the “Who You Are” Test

There is one more way to confirm that a person is real, and that is to check the person. Literally.

If someone on a smartphone or videoconference says that they are Jason Brown, how do you know that it’s the real Jason Brown and not Jim Smith, or a previous recording or simulation of Jason Brown?

This is where tools such as facial recognition and liveness detection come to play.

• You can ensure that the live face matches any face on record.
• You can also confirm that the face is truly a live face.

In addition to these two tests, you can compare the face against the face on the presented driver’s license or passport to offer additional confirmation of true identity.

Now some companies offer facial recognition, others offer liveness detection, others match the live face to a face on a government ID, and many companies offer two or three of these capabilities.

One more time: if your firm offers these capabilities—either your own or someone else’s—what are the benefits of your algorithms? (For example, are they more accurate than competing algorithms? And under what conditions?) And why is your solution better than the others?

This is for the firms who fight synthetic identities

While most of this post is of general interest to anyone dealing with synthetic identities, this part of this post is specifically addressed to identity and biometric firms who provide synthetic identity-fighting solutions.

When you communicate about your solutions, your communicator needs to have certain types of experience.

• Industry experience. Perhaps you sell your identity solution to financial institutions, or educational institutions , or a host of other industries (gambling/gaming, healthcare, hospitality, retailers, or sport/concert venues, or others). You need someone with this industry experience.
• Solution experience. Perhaps your communications require someone with 29 years of experience in identity, biometrics, and technology marketing, including experience with all five factors of authentication (and verification).
• Communication experience. Perhaps you need to effectively communicate with your prospects in a customer focused, benefits-oriented way. (Content that is all about you and your features won’t win business.)

Perhaps you can use Bredemarket, the identity content marketing expert. I work with you (and I have worked with others) to ensure that your content meets your awareness, consideration, and/or conversion goals.

How can I work with you to communicate your firm’s anti-synthetic identity message? For example, I can apply my identity/biometric blog expert knowledge to create an identity blog post for your firm. Blog posts provide an immediate business impact to your firm, and are easy to reshare and repurpose. For B2B needs, LinkedIn articles provide similar benefits.

If Bredemarket can help your firm convey your message about synthetic identity, let’s talk.

• Email me at john.bredehoft@bredemarket.com.
• Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket.
• Contact me at bredemarket.com/contact/.
• Subscribe to my mailing list at http://eepurl.com/hdHIaT.

And thirteen more things

If you haven’t read a Bredemarket blog post before, or even if you have, you may not realize that this post is jam-packed with additional information well beyond the post itself. This post alone links to the following Bredemarket posts and other content. You may want to follow one or more of the 13 links below if you need additional information on a particular topic:

1. Synthetic Identity video (YouTube), August 12, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDrSBlDJVCk
2. Using “Multispectral” and “Liveness” in the Same Sentence (Bredemarket blog), June 6, 2023. https://bredemarket.com/2023/06/06/using-multispectral-and-liveness-in-the-same-sentence/
3. Who is THE #1 NIST facial recognition vendor? (Bredemarket blog), February 23, 2022. https://bredemarket.com/2022/02/23/number1frvt/
4. Financial Identity (Bredemarket website). https://bredemarket.com/financial-identity/
5. Educational Identity (Bredemarket website). https://bredemarket.com/educational-identity/
6. The five authentication factors (Bredemarket blog), March 2, 2021. https://bredemarket.com/2021/03/02/the-five-authentication-factors/
7. Customer Focus (Bredemarket website). https://bredemarket.com/customer-focus/
8. Benefits (Bredemarket website). https://bredemarket.com/benefits/
9. Seven Questions Your Content Creator Should Ask You: the e-book version (Bredemarket blog and e-book), October 22, 2023. https://bredemarket.com/2023/10/22/seven-questions-your-content-creator-should-ask-you-the-e-book-version/
10. Four Mini-Case Studies for One Inland Empire Business—My Own (Bredemarket blog and e-book), April 16, 2023. https://bredemarket.com/2023/04/16/four-mini-case-studies-for-one-inland-empire-business-my-own/
11. Identity blog post writing (Bredemarket website). https://bredemarket.com/identity-blog-post-writing/
12. Blog About Your Identity Firm’s Benefits Now. Why Wait? (Bredemarket blog), August 11, 2023. https://bredemarket.com/2023/08/11/blog-about-your-identity-firms-benefits-now-why-wait/
13. Why Your Company Should Write LinkedIn Articles (Bredemarket LinkedIn article), July 31, 2023. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-your-company-should-write-linkedin-articles-bredemarket/

That’s twelve more things than the Cupertino guys do, although my office isn’t as cool as theirs.

Well, why not one more?

Here’s my latest brochure for the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service, my standard package to create your 400 to 600 word blog posts and LinkedIn articles. Be sure to check the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service page for updates.

If that doesn’t fit your needs, I have other offerings.

Plus, I’m real. I’m not a bot.