A wallet sold at Woolworth came with a sample Social Security card, and more than 40,000 people ended up claiming the number on it as their own.
Story Highlights
- A New York wallet maker printed a real Social Security number, 078-05-1120, on the sample cards tucked inside its wallets.
- The number belonged to Hilda Schrader Whitcher, a secretary at the company.
- Thousands of buyers used it as their own, with 5,755 people using it in a single year.
- The government voided the number and gave her a new one, but a few people were still using it decades later.
The trouble began in 1938, when the E. H. Ferree Co. of Lockport, N.Y., wanted to show shoppers that its new wallets had a pocket just the right size for a Social Security card. Social Security was only a few years old, and the cards were still new to most Americans. Douglas Patterson, the company’s vice president and treasurer, made a sample card for the display. Instead of making up a number, he used the real one that belonged to his secretary, Hilda Schrader Whitcher.
A Sample Card That Fooled Thousands
The wallets sold well at Woolworth, the national dime store chain, and at department stores around the country. The sample card did not look much like the real thing. According to the Social Security Administration, it was about half the size of a real card, printed all in red, and stamped “specimen” across the front.
Many buyers still took the card home and used the number as their own. Some had never gotten a number of their own. The misuse peaked in 1943, when 5,755 people were using Whitcher’s number. In all, more than 40,000 people reported it as theirs. The agency calls it the most misused Social Security number of all time.
The FBI Came Knocking
For Whitcher, the mix-up was no joke. The FBI visited her home to ask why so many people were using her number. Her coworkers teased her about her sudden fame. The government voided the number, told the public it was wrong to use it, and gave her a new one.
That did not stop it. The old number kept turning up on forms for years, and as late as 1977, 12 people were still using it. Late in life, Whitcher said she could not understand how people could be so foolish as to use a number that was not theirs.
Not the Only Case
More than a dozen similar cases followed, though most involved made-up numbers rather than a real person’s. In 1940, the Social Security Board, the agency that ran the program before the Social Security Administration, printed a pamphlet with a sample card on the cover showing the number 219-09-9999. In 1962, a woman at the Social Security office in Provo, Utah, said her new employer would not accept her number, 219-09-9999. When staff told her it could not be hers, she pulled out the 1940 pamphlet as proof.
The lesson still holds for every family. A Social Security number is meant to belong to one person, and once it spreads, it is hard to take back. Guard yours, and do not hand it over just because someone asks for it.
Sources:
oaoa.com, frankonfraud.com, taxgirl.com