The teller at a branch of US Bank in Los Angeles listened patiently as a customer, a middle-aged homeless man, outlined his problem. Someone had stolen his identity, opened a number of credit and current accounts in his name – William Woods – and run up $130,000 in debt. Could the bank help him please?

It was an August day in 2019 and the homeless man presented his identity documents to the teller, who noticed that the accounts had been opened in a different state and that some contained large sums of money. The teller asked him some security questions: where and when had the accounts been opened? How much money was in them? The homeless man didn’t know. The teller called the phone number listed on the accounts. A man with a high-pitched voice picked up and said that he was William Woods. He answered the security questions correctly and said “he was never in California,” the teller would later recall in court.

The teller suspected that the homeless man was trying to get into somebody else’s bank accounts using forged identity documents. He called the police and two officers arrived. One of them called the phone number listed on the bank accounts. The call was again answered by the man with the high-pitched voice. He repeated that his name was William Woods. He told the officer that he had not given anyone permission to close his bank accounts, and faxed them copies of his birth certificate, social-security card and Wisconsin driver’s licence. They all seemed genuine.