Fraud based on birth certificates

Press, 27 October 1982, Page 3

Fraud based on birth certificates

PA Wellington Although the Justice Department says its birth records should not be accepted as proof of identity, three other Government ’ departments use birth certificates as a key in their administrations.

Birth certificates are commonly used by people applying for passports, driver's licences, or social welfare benefits.

Weaknesses in the system have been revealed, often by criminals seeking to obtain a false identity. As recently as late last year it was shown in an Auckland drug trial that traffickers had obtained false passports by using the certificate of a dead person. The drug traffickers visited an Auckland graveyard and noted the identity of a boy born about the same time as himself. He obtained the dead boy’s birth certificate and used it to get a passport. Details of a person's death are not stamped on birth records.

A similar method has apparently been used to obtain national superannuation benefits illegally from the Social Welfare Department, and to obtain a driver's licence falsely. The Registrar-General. Mr Peter Horne, said yesterday that the system of obtaining false documents by using somebody else’s birth certificate was a very old story.

A birth certificate was a document relating to the registration of a birth at some place in the past.

“It was never intended as proof of identity and nobody should accept it as such,” Mr Horne said. . “To cross-reference all births and deaths to prevent Social Welfare benefit frauds would require me to make endorsements on 25,000 files each year and then go back 60 years,” he said. “Even then it would not overcome the problem because many people born in New Zealand leave the country and die overseas and there is no local record of that death." The Director-General of Social Welfare, Mr John Grant, said the department had systems to prevent

fraud. When people applied for a benefit, they were asked for a birth certificate and. in the case of married women, they were also required to produce a marriage certificate as legal proof of change of name.

National superannuitants had to give the name of somebody who had known them at’least 10 years. Based on figures obtained by the quality control programme. the department estimates that about $2O million a year in benefits is paid out wrongly. This is less than 1 per cent of the $3OOO million in benefits each year. The error is caused partly by mistakes within the department and partly by wrong information supplied by beneficiaries. A national system where everybody has a’ social security number, as in the United States, is not foolproof. Mr Grant said that in the United States those numbers were theqiselves used as the basis for a lot of fraud.

A check with the Passport Office yesterday showed that people are required to produce evidence of identity and citizenship. In most cases that would mean the production of a birth certificate and a statement from a referee who had known the applicant at least a year. A spokesman for the department. who did not wish to be identified.- refused to give details of checking procedures, as that would make fraud easier.

. 'However, the spokesman said the department had considerable success in detecting false applications for passports. The chief traffic officer for the Ministry of Transport, Mr Stan Young, said it was quite possible for somebody to obtain a driver’s licence under an assumed name by using a dead person’s birth certificate.

Also, it would be quite possibble for a person who had been disqualified from driving to obtain a licence under another name, he said. As far as he knew it had not happened. Usually those sorts of drivers were well known to traffic officers.