Hi Dragon,

Brief story. A few years ago I went to the embassy and had my passport seized. No reason given. Really a shite attitude too. OK, fine. I waited it out since I have a 2nd passport from another nation anyway. 2,3,and 4 weeks go by...I get pissed and called up a US Senator and a US Congressman. Come to find out some A-wipe from China used my credentials, passport, degree, etc., to impersonate me and had been applying for credit cards, etc., etc., That was lovely. Fortunately I did not have my passport, and had not left China at that time, because if I did, I would have been sitting in jail somewhere trying to explain A-Z about things that I had no idea about in the first place. They eventually caught the SOB and arrested him and his whole F-ing crew for criminal impersonation, conspiracy, etc., etc. I also had a school in China try and impersonate me as well by using a copy of my passport and a faked signature to try and get access to my college records. That case is active and ongoing now and it involves several acronyms. What they were doing was trying to obtain access to sensitive and privileged information using the mail and the wire to accomplish fraud. I also sued them and won and now I am suing them again in another jurisdiction as well. I have since left the USA as a citizen, but the case is being handled by an attorney and it does not effect the action so far.

What happens, if you ever bother to look, is that these Chinese criminals sell your degree in whole or in part to degree mills, most of which are in the UK somewhere. They focus on seals, watermarks, textured paper, font, color schemes, and logos. The degree mills pay top bucks because for fake degrees they make thousands of dollars and once they have a great copy, it is cheap and easy to reproduce thousands of BA's from XYZ college as an example. Most, many, foreigners, in my own opinion, are just to damn stupid and hand anything and everything over to just anyone, without any clue about who they are sending their documents to. Very scary and extremely stupid.

2 agencies you want to have on speed dial are the US Secret Service and the US Postal Inspection Service. Both agencies just love mail fraud, wire fraud and fake documents.

Back to my school...So there I was at home on Skype one night and I get a message from the college. It was someone that knows me quite well at my campus and they had my Skype ID. They wanted me on cam and voice to talk about a problem. The next thing I know, I see a 2nd body in the cam background and it is the campus public safety officer, (police). I somewhat knew the cop since he was a reservist and we used to talk off and on and from time to time. Anyway, he alerts me that someone in China is trying to access my files and my records and wants to know if it is me first of all, and secondly if I authorized anyone to act as my agent. Answer...NO and NO. At all of my colleges I have clearly worded and specific statements on file that all of my records are blocked and to call police immediately if anyone wants my records, and certainly so if I am not there in person making the request with 2 valid forms of ID, signature, student ID card, PIN, and a password.

Dragon, yes. You can find out via a few ways whether or not someone is impersonating you.

1) Run a FREE credit report on yourself spanning all 3 credit bureaus. You might find out that you are the proud new owner of an active BlackBerry account that you knew nothing about. (As was my case.) The nice about idiots that open cell phone accounts....is that since the phone is in your own name....you can also get your own calling records and then then give those to the police who can run all of the numbers and you can also reverse directory all of them yourself on line for free too. Phone numbers come with names, addresses, dates, times, etc.

2) You can appear in person at the US Embassy and ask to speak to the FBI legal attache, and/or the US Department of Diplomatic Security special agent for the US Embassy in Beijing. They will of course listen to your concerns, take and run your passport, (they do anyway, whether you know it or not), and if anyone is using your ID, there might be some action that they can pick up on and then you can work with them on the spot. They may for example cancel your passport instantly and give you an application to do it all over again.

3) You can pay about 25 bucks online and do a social security locate on yourself. That is also interesting. In my case I lived in places I never heard of before, and owned a double wide trailer. I was also working at a company I never heard of before. Very nice... ID theft is a lot of fun. I had a few open merchant accounts that were being charged on a regular basis too. Oh by the way, the idiot that did this all was a Chinese national illegally living in Los Angeles, California.

To anyone out there saying...what's the big deal? Or, I have nothing to hide....OK, that's cool. Wait until you fly home and you get arrested and held by the US Customs or US Marshal's Service at the port of entry and you don't know why. After a few hours of cooling your stupid butt in an airport holding facility pending transportation to the county jail or better yet, federal holding facility, and when you finally are advised of your Miranda Rights and face the FBI for a few hours of questioning...you'll "get it" then. 30-days later while you are still waiting in jail in a deer hunter orange jumpsuit for a pretrial appearance, and after you lose your job, your girlfriend, and people have no idea where you are, and they finally realize it was all a mistake...maybe you'll think twice about being so stupid and blindly sending your ID and degree and resume to some fool online that claims to be a recruiter. In my own case, my data was stolen from the employer and the school HR manager lied in several documents to a college claiming that I was applying for a job at their school after I had already left! There is currently a warrant out for her arrest and one can only hope she goes to the USA and I do hope they grant her a visa. Sadly I doubt that they will. She is currently wanted by the Texas Department of Public Safety, Texas Attorney General's Office and the U.S. Attorney General's Office in Texas, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and apparently the U.S. Government Printing Office Police. The next time I see her in court I am half tempted to slap some cuffs on her myself and haul her ass over to the front gates of the US Embassy and toss her onto US property and whistle.

If you are overseas for a long time you need to run your credit for free annually and run all 3 bureaus. It just make sense and you can also place fraud alerts in your credit reports. DO IT. Its free!

What I tell any valid employer if they want to see my documents is that I will gladly bring them in person. If the government, (not them) needs a copy, let the government make the copies and then document who is doing it and where. Date, time, place, reason, etc. I even use my cell phone when and where possible to photo them doing it. Its so worth it!

As for anyone making copies of your US passport...stupid....I urge you to read the US Patriot Act and the Homeland Security rules pertaining to machine readable travel documents and take a look at the inside of your passport where it discusses first of all that your passport is not to be used by any other person for any reason, and that the passport belongs to the US government, not you. If they get a whiff of someone doing something odd or funny with your name, dob, etc., CLICK! You are on the shite list and the next time you clear customs anywhere....you'll be sitting in a nice little side room of the airport in XYZ country waiting for a nice man from INTERPOL to have a chat with you until a US consular officer can come sit with you for some fun Q&A.

Lucky you! If its a good day, you look and feel like shite and its hot so you are sweating and you're already freaked out and nervous and so....they won't believe you...UR Guilty friends...Got 25K for a good international lawyer?