Somewhere there’s an American citizen—we’ll call him Joe Smith–with a criminal record showing a 2002 federal narcotics conviction. In March, he was arrested as he tried to return to the United States from Mexico. That’s when Customs and Border Patrol officers discovered his tourist visa had been revoked, and there was an outstanding arrest warrant for violating the terms of his supervised release after serving prison time for a 2002 federal narcotics case.

But Joe Smith had nothing to do with these crimes. The man arrested at the border showed his birth certificate, Texas I.D. card and Social Security card, but he wasn’t really Joe Smith.

He was Jose Guadalupe Ramirez Ortiz, a drug trafficker from Mexico. When arrested at the U.S. border in Laredo, Texas, he finally confessed to his true identity and admitted he’d bought Smith’s birth certificate. Once he had that document, getting the others was easy.

The ruse was so convincing, he successfully used Smith’s identity to illegally live and work in the United States for several years. He even used it when he was arrested, tried, convicted and served time in federal prison on the earlier narcotics charge.

Ortiz now faces charges of aggravated identity theft and misrepresentation of a U.S. citizen, and will serve the remaining three years of his supervised release before being deported to Mexico. But his problems pale in comparison to Joe Smith’s.

Smith faces years of recovery from identity theft. He’s a victim of criminal identity theft because Ortiz used his name when arrested. He’s a victim of government documents identity theft because Ortiz used documents in his name. His tax records and Social Security records are fouled, perhaps irreversibly.

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