Here comes more bad news for identity theft victims

By Timothy Pratt

Wednesday, May 23, 2007 | 7:03 a.m.

The cell phone has not been kind to Panamanian businessman Omar Rueda Denvers in recent weeks.

While he was eating lunch May 9, a friend called to ask how he could have killed a man with a bomb outside a Las Vegas casino.

That call started him on a whirlwind campaign to clear his name, as he explained to his country's media, national government, the U.S. Embassy, the FBI and police in Southern Nevada that the suspect captured in Las Vegas had stolen his identity three years earlier.

Just as he was catching his breath from that unexpected launch into international intrigue, his phone rang again last Friday. This time, Metro was on the line, telling him that unfortunately, the man awaiting a trial date in Las Vegas on murder charges had been arrested previously on narcotics charges, also while using the name of Rueda Denvers.

"How is this possible?" said Reynaldo Rivera Jr., Rueda Denvers' attorney.

His client had since stopped answering the phone about the case, under strict orders from his doctor, because of stress brought on by the latest bit of bad news, Rivera said.

Rivera and his client have begun searching for a lawyer in the United States to help clear Rueda Denvers' name.

Experts say the Panamanian has been thrown into the sort of scenario that will become more common as illegal immigration, identity theft and crime increasingly intersect.

"We're becoming more aware of this," said Jay Foley, executive director of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a San Diego-based nonprofit organization.

"We're seeing illegal immigrants stealing IDs and committing crimes, creating havoc for the people whose identity is stolen," Foley said, adding that one-third of the 75 cases he is investigating fit that profile.

Most illegal immigrants who take on assumed identities claim the names and Social Security numbers of U.S. citizens or residents - not the identities of foreigners - to find work and obtain goods and services, he said.

But the effect is the same.

The burden falls on the person whose identity has been stolen to prove to authorities where the crime was committed that he or she is not guilty.

Even after the local jurisdiction clears an identity theft victim whose name is linked to a crime, that information may remain in federal crime databases, Foley said.

That's why some states are considering or have set up programs that give such victims a card or other proof that their names are clean. Nevada is among those states, with the state attorney general's year-old Identity Theft Passport Program.

Bill Cassell of Metro could not confirm the most recent development involving Rueda Denvers. He said officials are in Panama investigating the matter.

Metro, he said, has a variety of methods for determining the identity of suspects, but it is up to victims of identity theft to go to courts where crimes have been committed to establish that their names were wrongly implicated .

Marti Dinerstein, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based group that favors tighter immigration laws, said illegal immigrants who commit crimes create a scenario that is "like a ticking time bomb" for identity theft victims.

"Somewhere on police records that person ... has been recorded forever ... and this may come back to haunt that person later," she said.

Rivera said he was concerned about Rueda Denvers' ability to travel in the future.

"We're interested in clearing his name," he said.

That may take some time.

At District Attorney David Roger's office Tuesday, executive assistant Kathy Kastedt said officials still are "using the names on the complaint - Omar Rueda Denvers ... and not changing them until Metro can figure it out."

Rueda Denvers, in Panama, said last week that the man Metro has detained is really Alexander Perez, a Guatemalan immigrant who worked as his handyman in late 2003.

Jorge Cabrera, vice consul for Guatemala in Los Angeles, said his office had not been contacted by law enforcement authorities to verify those claims, although they might have contacted his government directly. Still, he said he had done a little checking himself.

"There's a ton of Alexander Perezes," he said.

"Who is Alexander Perez? There's no way to know."