Re: Credit cards, false names, and important details

[frissell@panix.com (Duncan Frissell)]

At 11:25 AM 8/23/94 -0500, Jim Hart wrote:
>
>How is this simple?   A credit card company sure as hell wants
>to known who you truly are and where you truly live.  It must
>be able to collect its debt and mark your credit rating.
>Applying for a credit card with false name or Social Security 
>number is fraud, with heavy punishments.  Or are there, yet 
>again, numerous details you are neglecting to mention?
>
>Jim Hart
>hart@chaos.bsu.edu

There is no such thing as a false name.  You can still call yourself
anything you like (and spell it any way).  If you are trying to pretend to
be another actual person, there may be fraud involved.  No one's busted the
Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus -- Kawize(sp?) Infume -- for
using a name other than his birth name.

The issuers of secured credit cards vary in the amount of info they want
about you.  Citibank's secured credit card app asks for almost as much info
as their normal app.  Some secure card issuers just want to know your name
address and SS #.  The overseas issuers of bank debit Visa cards don't want
your SS# but usually these days want a bank reference. 

Using a nome de guerre and an accomodation address is not fraud.  They asked
for your name and address and you supplied it.  It is an interesting
question as to whether or not using a phoney SS# would be fraud.  This is
particularly uncertain if the bank would have issued you a secured credit
card even if you gave your "real" SS#.  If you are just trying to protect
your privacy, and not trying to induce the bank to do anything that it would
not have done anyway, is there fraud since the "lie" is not material to the
granting of credit in the case of secured credit cards?  It will not come up
in any case.

Note too that the SS# requirement is there not because the bank wants it but
because the *government* requires it.  (A credit card account is actually a
bank account.)  You are not lying to the credit card issuer but to the State
that is forcing them to invade your privacy.   Lying to the government is
not fraud because you (or I at least) am not attempting to get anything of
value from them.

The "Necessity Defense" can always be used to justify lying to the government.

DCF
"You speak Treason!" - The Lady Marion Fitzwalter
"Fluently!"          - Sir Robin of Loxley
   Not from the politically correct version.