I have a situation here and am not sure what to do. Customer came in and applied for a loan. We run the credit report and it shows a SSN discrepancy. Totally different SSN on the credit report than the one he used to apply for the loan. I use our SSN verification site and the SSN he used to apply comes up in his name. However, the one showing on the credit report came up in his name with four other people showing as having the same number. The other people all have the same last name as his and are female. The verification site shows the number as belonging to a female.

So, what should I do? He applied for the loan using his correct SSN, but what do I do about this other issue. I don't want to get caught up with him and these other people being involved in some kind of fraud ring or something.

Is it possible that he has been a victim of identity theft?

He doesn't think so. The loan officer went over his credit report with him and nothing was unusual. I don't know if the loan officer has talked to him yet about what we found regarding the second SSN.

But, based on the situation should we/can we still open the loan account for him? Obviously he passed our ID verification with his SSN.

If these other names are showing up on his CR, he should be contacting the CBs to dispute them. This happened to me some years ago and there were 26 trade lines that were not mine they had to remove.

I have a related question. Is this a red flag? We ran an e-funds report on a prospective new deposit customer. Everything came back "pass" but there was a note at the bottom that said another name was use with this ssn. Causes may be a name change or id theft. Is this a Red Flag, since our data did match the E-funds report info.?

My frustration with this is that we have been given the responsibility to identify red flags, but our tools are limited in the area of confirmning the TIN. I've been told that as banks we can sign up with the 'employment' verification system at the Social Security Administration, however in my investigation of that it seemed to be very clear that it was only available for the used connected with employment.

Does anyone have experience with this process? Our current method doesn't provide a definitive answer for us, it merely gives other people that may be associated with this. For BSA purposes and ID theft purposes, I would sure like stronger tools.

We were sent information from a company that can confirm in real time that a potential customer's Social Security number actually matches their name. Of course there is a cost per new account opening. My questions

Is anyone doing using this type of service?
Is there a way to get the same information free?
What are you thoughts?

After doing some research, I have answered my own questions. Thanks a bunch!