Man Persecuted With False Cyber-Information
For four long years, Bronti Kelly couldn’t figure out why no one wanted to hire him.
He handed department store managers across Southern California a resume full of sales experience, but was rejected hundreds of times. Those rare times when he got a job, he’d be fired within days.
Along the way, Kelly filed for bankruptcy, lost his apartment and turned homeless. “For years as this went on, I blamed myself--for not being hired for employment, the conditions I went through,” Kelly says.
But Kelly’s self-blame turned to anger when he finally learned the cause of much of his trouble: A man had given Kelly’s identity to authorities when arrested for shoplifting and other crimes, and the tainted profile found its way onto a range of computer databases that employers use for background checks.
Kelly’s plight illuminates the growing threats to privacy in an age of ever-easier computer access to public information. An inaccurate black mark left on a person’s profile can be duplicated again and again without the victim’s knowledge. The personal details are easily and cheaply obtainable--and open to abuse by crooks trying to dodge the law or make a buck.
It used to be that to get background information, you had to trek down to a courthouse, ask the clerk to direct you to the proper records and thumb through musty files. For another type of information, you had to visit yet another government agency.
But in recent years more and more information vendors have signed deals with governments and businesses for computer access that enables them to compile virtual dossiers on Americans--from Social Security numbers to shopping preferences.
Crooks no longer have to look for crumpled credit card carbons to steal a person’s account number. Now, for nominal fees, personal details such as Social Security numbers can be found over the Internet and used to create a whole new identity for opening an account--and sticking the fraud victim with the bills.
Consumers Union in San Francisco found that half of credit-bureau reports surveyed in 1991 contained errors, about 20% of which were big enough to prevent an individual from buying a home or a car.
“The information age permits the exchange of data so quickly, with so few safeguards, that you really become a victim before you know it,” says Edward Howard, head of the Los Angeles-based Center for Law in the Public Interest.
“Not only do you become a victim, you’re constantly behind the curve when you’re trying to clean it up.”
Bronti Wayne Kelly, now 33, hardly foresaw the cyber-nightmare that would grow from what seemed an old-fashioned wallet-snatching in May 1990. He reported to police his wallet only contained $4--along with his driver’s license, Social Security card and military I.D. for the Air Force base in Southern California where he served as a reservist.
But seven months later, Kelly, a salesman in the Robinsons-May department store in Riverside, was ushered into the personnel director’s office and told he’d been caught shoplifting by security guards in another Robinsons.
Kelly produced a letter from his commanding Air Force officer saying that he was on duty when the crime occurred but was fired anyway. He says he was equally confounded by the blur of job rejections that followed, usually with no explanation.
For two years he held on--Kelly’s work as a mechanic at the local Air Force base earned him about $700 a month. But in June 1993, the six-year reserve stint was up.
With no job in sight, Kelly filed for bankruptcy to stave off bill collectors. He was evicted from his apartment in San Bernardino.
Kelly stayed with friends until he wore out his welcome. He turned to sleeping in his car, then the streets, using public parking garages downtown to shield him from the elements.
He tried to keep clean using a pool shower at his old apartment complex. He applied for food stamps and welfare but was rejected because he had no residence.
In August 1994, he finally landed a job selling clothes at Harris department store in nearby Riverside, but the day before his first day of work was told his services weren’t needed.
Kelly, crying at the news, tried to find out why. The personnel manager told him to contact Stores Protective Assn., which exchanges information about employees with more than 100 member retail chains.
Kelly wrote to SPA and received a written explanation in January 1995, pegging him for the same shoplifting offense that he’d thought was purged from the records four years earlier.
“I couldn’t believe the information was still on file,” Kelly says. “I had never even heard of [SPA] before.”
But the vast majority of employers Kelly had applied to were members of SPA. It took until the next month for the association to remove Kelly’s misinformation from its files, and only after a local television station reported his woes.
A lawyer for SPA, which Kelly is suing in a defamation lawsuit that also names Robinsons-May’s parent, said that Kelly had never given it evidence other than his own statement that he wasn’t the shoplifter. Kelly is seeking unspecified damages and a public apology from Robinsons-May.
Robert Cornell, the SPA’s lawyer, said he couldn’t comment further ahead of the trial, set for Oct. 27 in Los Angeles County Superior Court. A spokeswoman for May Department Stores, the St. Louis-based parent of Robinsons-May, also declined to comment.
Kelly’s problem was far more complicated than he suspected. When Kelly contacted the Los Angeles Police Department to try to straighten things out, he discovered that their records showed that he’d been arrested five years earlier not only for shoplifting, but for burglary and arson as well.
Kelly submitted his fingerprints to prove to authorities he wasn’t the accused culprit, another white male who’d given Bronti’s identity to police. Police gave Kelly a “Certificate of Clearance,” which states that the police determined that he wasn’t the person arrested.
But Kelly’s tainted identity remains in police files--even though the most serious charges against the impersonator had been dismissed shortly after his arrest in July 1990. Los Angeles police officials say they need the charges on record in case the impostor is arrested for other crimes. Moreover, prosecuting agencies--including state courts in several California counties--maintain their own records that can be accessed by information vendors via the Internet.
“It’s kind of an Orwellian nightmare,” acknowledges Clifford Weiss, assistant to the executive director of the Los Angeles Police Commission. “In spite of the fact that Mr. Kelly wanted to have the record sealed or closed, doing that would have prevented us from prosecuting the crime.”
Since stores aren’t required to tell an applicant that they’re running a background check, Kelly knows with certainty of only seven Robinsons and Harris stores that found tainted information. He’s not upset that background checks are part of the system, but wishes stores would have told him why he didn’t get the job.
“Nobody really knows the extent of the damage until it is done,” he says. “That infuriates me. Why not tell someone if they run a background check on them?”
After the SPA removed Kelly’s name from their files, he was still rejected for another 50 jobs--and he is still wondering why. One possibility is that the incorrect information continues to haunt him.
The problem was spelled out last month after Associated Press hired an information search company, Forefront Inc. of Hattiesburg, Miss., to conduct a search of Kelly’s background.
AP simply gave Forefront, a subcontractor to Informus Corp., Kelly’s name, Social Security number and a $124 check to search state court records in three counties in Southern California. Like other information vendors, Forefront is linked via the Internet to state courts.
The search came back showing that Kelly was arrested in July 1990 for arson, theft and disturbing the peace.
Forefront owner Edward Fore was apologetic when told that the search dug up inaccurate details on Kelly, but said as an information broker he was caught in the middle.
“That’s horrible,” he said of Kelly’s plight. “The Internet can do as much damage to someone as it can help. The flow of information is so fast and furious.”
Electronic access has benefited many--for instance, easier tracking of long-lost relatives and fugitives and faster background checks. But public officials are learning the limits of bringing their paper-based records into the computer age.
Last year, the Social Security Administration suspended an Internet service that let taxpayers see their records after being accused of putting America’s privacy at risk. The agency plans to roll out a more modest and secure version later this year.
In Danville, Calif., a 14-year-old student was kicked out of high school after teachers checking his disciplinary file found four junior high drug busts. In fact, there were no arrests. The miscommunication was the result of two schools using different sets of computer code numbers for disciplinary offenses that could be as minor as gum chewing in class.
Americans overwhelmingly believe that privacy is more important than unfettered access to public records, by 86% to 8% in a recent AP poll.
“The general public has a right to certain information,” said Douglas Walker, of the National Center of State Courts in Williamsburg, Va. “But how do you draw the line?”
Although search companies say they make their information available only to those with legitimate needs to know--credit agencies and employers, for example--that isn’t always the case. Forefront asked no information about who was ordering the search or what it was being used for.
This lack of screening also makes the information easy to access for those with unscrupulous motives. And laws are just now catching up to the changes wrought by technology.
A bill in California would for the first time make identity theft a punishable crime. It also would require retailers and banks to be more careful in giving out instant credit, and make it easier for fraud victims to correct bad information in a credit report.
But the bill, which is expected to become law this year, wouldn’t help victims like Kelly fix records in background-check companies, and privacy advocates say stricter rules in the credit-reporting industry should apply more broadly.
“I was amazed that we don’t seem have a precedent in this area,” said David Brown, an attorney in Downey, who is representing Kelly in his lawsuit.
California and many other states are struggling to devise uniform rules for publicizing such information as court records, which may go well beyond criminal histories. While current rules specify what courts should make public or keep private, lots of areas fall in the middle--like financial details disclosed in family cases--and are neither prohibited nor mandated to be disclosed, Walker says.
Technology is complicating things as courts step lightly. Records officials try to make it tougher for searchers trying to create dossiers on people. Instead of letting search outfits “mine” different databases for juicy details, courts simply supply information exactly as it appears on paper records.
But software technology enables information collectors to easily get around those restrictions.
“One of the things we’re not supposed to do is provide a rap sheet--a compilation of a criminal history,” said Victor Rowley, manager of technology, policy and planning for the administrative office of the California State Courts, based in San Francisco. “But with computers these companies can gather the pieces and create their own rap sheet.”
And the government is tightening its ties with the Internet. One proposal being considered by courts across the country would enable people to simply click onto a World Wide Web site, with icons for courts and cases.
“If bad data gets out there, who’s responsible for that?” asks Alan Slater, clerk for Orange County Superior Court and co-chairman of a national panel devoted to advancing court technology.
“It’s a situation that nationally and internationally society is going to have to wrestle with.”
But Kelly no longer has to. Seven years after his wallet was stolen, he has stopped seeking work among strangers. Today, he’s employed part-time cleaning pools in a family business, and shares an apartment in Temecula, near San Diego, with a roommate who has helped him out financially.
Trying to rebuild his self-image, Kelly carries his police certificate clearing him of crimes wherever he goes. One look in the mirror confirms that he wasn’t the one who dragged down his life.
Says Kelly: “A part of me feels very proud.”
But just to be sure, he’s thinking of changing his name.
