Professor,
Things have changed a bit since the 1965-1985 period with respect to Birth and Death Certificates.
I recognize the tactic that Hogue used - the clue was the identity that he took...that of an infant who died shortly after birth.
The tactic was extensively used by the 1960's radical terrorists. They would look in the newspaper morgues for obituaries from about 1945-1950. They would be looking for babies who died shortly after birth and why. They wanted deaths where the parents also died - maybe an auto accident. They would find this information by looking at back issues just before the obit to see if there was an article about the accident. From the obit they would have the child's name, usually the birthdate and the parent's names.
They would then go to the hall of records in the county where the child was born and claim that they were that child, had lost their ID and birth certificate and then ordered up a certified copy of the birth certificate. The hall of records was usually not computerized and there was no notation on the birth certificate that the child had died. They would choose large cities where the clerk was far too busy to ask many questions because they simply wanted to move the line along.
The other advantage of choosing a large city was the absolute number of deaths. They chose a locale with a very large population because they would need to run through a large number of child deaths to find the right child death situations.
In a large city they would be unlikely to run into someone who knew the family of the decedent(s). This is the advantage of anonymity in a large city.
With the birth certifiacte in hand they would then go to Social Security and obtain a Social Security Card. Next stop was DMV for a driver's license. They then had a clean, new ID with no criminal background, no fingerprints on file and no parents to "pop" up and claim they were imposters.
During that period of time each bank branch issued its own credit cards (i.e. Master Charge - now Master Card). They would go to a bank, apply for and obtain a credit card.
They would repeat this maybe ten times and build ten ID's with ten credit cards. The cycle closing date on each card was different - the bills were not all due on the 1st, 15th or 30th. It could be any day of the month...they could even ask for a specific day.
They would use the cards and pay the bills regularly for a few months and build up a $1,000 cash credit limit. Then they started to kite funds.
They would take the maximum cash draw on the first nine cards ($9,000) and keep the cash on hand. With card #10 they would take a maximum cash draw and pay off card #1. They continued throught he cycle by kiting funds from each successive card to pay off the next card's bill. All payments were on time thus no late fees or interest was due. Using this method they never had to pay back the $9,000.
This kiting scheme had an additional benefit. Great credit! They use the cards regularly, maxed them out and paid them off on time. TRW loved them. The bank would raise the limit to $2,000
When they were ready to bail out they maxed out all ten cards and walked away with $20,000. In doing so they also burned all ten sets of ID and the credit cards. Those ten "dead" people died once again and disappeared without a trace.
This is how the radicals funded their terrorist campaigns in the US during the civil war 1968-1975.
All of this was easy to accomplish because birth and death certificates were not cross matched upon death and credit cards were not handled by an integrated computing system. It didn't come about until the late 1980's. DMV's now digitize the photos and thumb prints used for driver's licenses and they regularly scan their database for fraudulent ID's.
The method will not work today.
The next step is to secure transcripts. The radicals had plenty of contacts in Cuba, Libia, USSR and Nicargua. They would slip into Mexico and travel to those countries for insurgency training. Getting seemingly good transcripts, issued by a foreign jurisdiction, was easily accomplished.
So there you have it. One clean ID and one set of clean high school and/or college transcripts.
BTW: This is how the Weathermen/Weather Underground (WU) and SDS/RYM II factions funded their terrorist organizations.
PS: Please, folks, don't try this. It's obviously illegal and you will get caught it short order. As I said above, the method won't work because banks, halls of records and DMV's have seriously tightened up security to prevent just this sort of fraud by criminals and terrorists.
I posted the detailsbecause it won't work today. The information is no longer classified. If it was a viable scheme I would not have made the post.
