The ID 'nightmare'

Alias Smith and Jones ... keeping it simple. Photo / Supplied

Nearly a quarter of a million New Zealanders use at least one false name, and more than half of those have not paid their bills.

Credit bureau Veda Advantage has identified one person who uses as many as 36 different names.

It has records on nearly 2000 people who use more than five aliases, and 127 who are known by 10 or more different identities.

Veda managing director John Roberts said aliases were a major issue. Between them Kiwis used a total of 428,000 fake names.

"There's a whole bunch of people out there trying to obtain credit by fraudulent means."

The problem was growing as people hit economic hard times and tried to "debt surf". Last year Veda recorded around 600 new aliases a month, but that had increased to 1000 a month.

People thought they could get away with it but a credit check often picked them up, he said. "Because we know about the aliases they're using and they use other standard information they don't think about, we can match the identity."

The person with 36 identities had hired appliances from a rental company. The firm contacted Veda when they failed to make any payments.

"We came back with all the different aliases. This person also had two bankruptcies."

Danny Toresen, of private investigation firm Thompson and Toresen, confirmed it was a common problem.

His company did a lot of pre-employment screening and the percentage of people who turned out to have aliases was "pretty staggering".

A recent check on an employee hired by a manufacturing firm revealed the person had more than 100 aliases and three convictions.

"It's a real lesson in doing these pre-employment and credit checks," Toresen said.

He said people of Samoan and Chinese heritage often innocently had more than one name, as they took other family names and mixed around their first and surnames. "That maybe inflates the Veda figures a little bit."

But Ron McQuilter, managing director of investigation agency Paragon, said it was "an absolute nightmare" for investigators. "Almost every Chinese investigation we do includes a permutation of different names."

Alias Smith and Brown

Kiwis are not very imaginative when creating alternative identities. The three most commonly used aliases are Smith, Brown and Williams. For Southeast Asian communities Singh and Patel are popular.

One man used a string of different aliases, including The Hawke; another - who used a range of Pasifika and NZ European surnames - also changed gender several times, using Molly three times and Maurice twice.

A man with seven aliases used a range of Middle Eastern surnames and first names, including Sultan.

However he was not fussy about ethnic identity - he also adopted the name David Smith, and sometimes called himself Antonio.

Common aliases

Surname/Count:

Smith: 413
Brown: 330
Williams: 317
Singh: 261
Wilson: 245
Thompson: 217
Taylor: 213
Lee: 186
Jones: 155
Patel: 144
Edwards: 143
Walker: 141
King: 139
Harris: 136
Anderson: 136
Campbell: 125

- Source: Veda Advantage

maria.slade@hos.co.nz