WICHITA, Kan. (AP) - For almost 12 years, a Houston elementary school teacher and an illegal immigrant living in Topeka have engaged in a tug of war to claim the identity of Candida L. Gutierrez in a case that has put a face on the growing crime of "total identity theft" in the United States.
On Monday, the real Candida L. Gutierrez saw her identity thief, Benita Cardona-Gonzalez, for the first time. Their encounter came inside a federal courtroom in Wichita, where Cardona-Gonzalez, a Mexican national, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for possessing fraudulent identification documents.
When Gutierrez's identity was stolen, the thief didn't stop at opening fraudulent credit and bank accounts. Cardona-Gonzalez assumed Gutierrez's persona completely, using it to get a job, a driver's license, a mortgage and medical care for her children. She even put the stolen name on the birth certificates of her two U.S.-born children.