Identity theft is a scam that is constantly on the rise with the rise of online procedures. Some 300,000 people are victims each year. They are faced with a Kafkaesque puzzle: proving that they are indeed... themselves. A real obstacle course that the show “Envoyé Spécial” looked into. With astonishing testimonies.
Since a crook stole his identity papers on a train in 1999, José has never been able to get married or recognize his children at birth: the crook had already done it for him! “A nightmare that stole half my life,” he says. The fact that the individual was put in prison for rape in 2009 changed nothing: he ended up filing a complaint in 2014, from the depths of his cell, for… identity theft, presenting himself as the victim. Against all expectations, the character obtains an identity card and a Vitale card, with which he begins again, upon his release from prison, to usurp José's identity.
Léane, 20, is asked by the SNCF for dozens of unpaid train tickets for journeys she never took... She discovers that, since 2021, someone else has been traveling under her name without a travel permit. transport, presenting inspectors with a false identity card. The result is 6,000 euros in fines! It's her father who will end up getting her out of trouble - momentarily - by not letting go of the SNCF, itself in "an impasse because of GDPR data protection and the compartmentalization of administrative services", he says. .
New form of crime
Sébastien, a computer scientist from Nemours (Seine-et-Marne), owes “nearly 100,000 euros to different organizations for loans [that he] never took out”: someone opened a bank account in his name in Morbihan, where he says he has “never set foot”. He decided to call on the lawyer Fily Kante, whose brother was confronted with this new form of crime, and who created a start-up, ID Protect, to “support victims in their efforts” (for a subscription of 79 euros to 489 euros).
In her breathtaking documentary, worthy of a Hitchcock film or Endless Day (Harold Ramis, 1993), Corinne Langlois failed to film any of these usurpers. That of José, who appears without complexes on social networks, supporting photos of himself, did not want to open his door to journalists, believing that “it’s a settled matter”.
The victim – the real one – hired a lawyer and conducted herself “the neighborhood investigation that the police were unable to do” in Ris-Orangis (Essonne), her hometown. “My brothers and sisters still live there, but no one has come to question them,” says José, who will take action against the state. In the meantime, as an outlet, he writes the novel of this stolen life. The title: Someone Else's Shadow.
