In a televised interview, hosts Mike Jerrick and Juliette Huddy speak with identity‑theft victim Randy Waldron and security expert Robert Siciliano about a shocking case where Randy’s own father stole his Social Security number and accumulated over $2.5 million in debt over 16 years. Randy recounts how the fraud began when he was a child, the discovery in 1998, the denial by his father, and the arduous process of obtaining a new SSN and affidavits, which law enforcement largely ignored. Siciliano explains why the Social Security number functions as a flawed national identifier, how banks and credit agencies fail to cross‑reference age or identity, and why family‑based identity theft affects up to half of the 10 million annual cases in the U.S. The conversation shifts to practical prevention, emphasizing credit freezes, safeguarding SSNs, and the challenges children face when a parent misuses their identity. Randy shares his current work in aviation and credits his mother’s support for his resilience, while expressing a desire for an apology rather than incarceration. The segment ends with a call to action for viewers to seek further protection tips.
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And now, your hosts, Mike Jerrick and Juliette Huddy.
You're about to meet was a victim of identity theft and the culprit turned out to be his own father.
Yeah, in 25 to 50% of identity theft cases, the thief is a parent or a relative. That number shocked me. I'm really sorry because I never heard of this, but it leaves the likes of children like our next guest destroyed. Watch this story. Joining us right now is identity theft victim Randy Waldron and also the author of The Safety Minute, ID theft expert Robert Siciliano. Thank you guys for joining us. So, Randy, by the time you were 13 years old, you were how much in debt?
A little bit over $2.5 million in debt by the time I was 13.
And it obviously wasn't you out there spending, you know, flying out there.
No, I wish it was.
I really do, but it wasn't. It was my dad.
You have a great attitude about it, but you've gone through such hell.
I have. I've gone through— it's been a really tough time. And, you know, we were talking before, and the hardest part about it is no one really believed me for quite a long time. They thought, you know, you're in cahoots with your parents, you're trying to help them out, maybe they got in a bad state, and, you know, you're just trying to say, hey, you know, let me bear the burden, and, you know, it wasn't them, it was me, etc. And it was really tough, and it's still tough to this day.
I bet it is.
At what age did everybody figure out, "It's my dad!" Well, you know, he started using my Social Security number in '82, so we're going back 25 years. We found out, my mother and I, single parent, you know, she raised me right and did right by me, but we found out in 1998. And so he did this all that time, 16 years, and no one ever knew.
16 years of racking up. Now the thing that surprises me is that he was able to, over that 16 years, he was able to maintain Good enough credit, I guess, to keep on getting credit. Exactly.
And then when he faltered on that credit, he declared bankruptcy twice.
So you were 17 years old, you were trying to apply for student loans to college.
Exactly.
And you're thinking, hey, this is going to be no problem.
Yeah, this is going to be great. I'm going to go to school, I'm going to, you know, start my life like all of my other friends. And, you know, we send away for the college applications and fill out the financial aid paperwork. It comes back and—
Rejected. Rejected. And what did it say? Why were you rejected?
Rejected on the basis of that I had back taxes that I owed the IRS. Oh, God. And rejected on the basis of bad credit. I had worked essentially for, you know, my Social Security number had posted earnings for 16 or 17 years, never once paid taxes.
Do you think it was a joke?
Oh yeah, I thought it was a total joke. I thought this is just a mistake, you know, same name, you know, very easy to transpose information at a credit bureau.
How? Do you have a new Social Security number?
I have a new Social Security number which took me quite some time to get, and I'm one of the few people who has actually been able to get a new number. It's a tough process, real tough.
You think he's trying to hack to get it, this new one?
That's what I think.
Have you thought about changing your name?
I've thought about changing my name, but then changing my name, if I change my name, then—
It makes him—
Number one, I lose, you know, my entire identity with, you know, who am I going to be, Joe Smith? And yeah, yeah, I mean, that's just some great things with this. And that's why—
Robert, what's going on here, man? He simply— he was using a Social Security number. Should it be that easy?
Unfortunately, it is. See, your Social Security number is your national ID. It's your primary identifier. And anybody that gets a hold of those 9 numbers simply can become you, because the reality of it is there's no relationship between those 9 numbers and who you really are. So anybody who acquires them, just uses them for any financial accounts, to open up credit cards, loans, and so on, for insurance purposes, again, those 9 numbers have been assigned to you as your national ID.
That's so scary because those numbers, I mean, we carry around our, you know, we carry around our Social Security cards in our wallets, things like that. I mean, it just seems like you're just a sitting duck for whatever thief wants to come along and grab your wallet.
This is a fundamentally flawed system of identification. We were never meant to use the Social Security number as our primary identifier. It's just supposed to be for Social Security benefits. But in the '70s and the '80s, banks and credit card companies started to use that for all of our financial accounts, and it became, again, our national identifier.
So it's the cross-referencing that's kind of screwed up.
Well, there's no actual cross-referencing that Social Security number with the Social Security Administration and the financial institutions. They don't check to see how old that person is who's applying for credit.
That's crazy. Yeah, he was 15, 13 years old.
The banks, the credit card companies take that initial application with the age on it at face value and they believe that to be the age of the person.
Randy, how'd you find your dad?
Well, he left my mother and I when I was just an infant and I had no contact with him until I was 13 years old. He popped back into my life and for all accounts he was a great guy.
Why do you think he popped back into your life?
I don't know, I don't know. I mean, you know, he does things to be a self-serving type of individual, so I think he just did it to maybe prove a point. Fly down and meet him and, you know, go and hang out with him when I was 13 or 14.
When you learned the real deal, you went down and what did you say to him in that meeting?
My friend and I, who, um, we had to think like crooks, we had to think like criminals. And I said to my lawyer, and I said to my very good friend who I hope is watching now, I said to her, you know, we have to go down to Florida and get him to sign some affidavits so that I can at least start the process to get this cleared up because no one believed it.
You're asking your father who has ripped you off basically your entire life, right, to sign an affidavit admitting essentially that he's a crook.
Exactly.
I mean, what— did he do it?
He did. He did it very reluctantly.
What did you do to get him to do it? And who is this friend of yours?
My friend, who I have to say, she's like my best friend in the whole wide world. She a bodybuilder? No, she's not. She's a little 5-foot-2 flight attendant. And we flew to West Palm Beach, we walked into his restaurant, and I said to him, hey, Dad, how you doing? Nice to see you. Got these affidavits, need to sign them. If you don't, this is my attorney, we're going to put you in jail.
What's he say?
He said, "No, I wouldn't do anything like that to you. I didn't do this. This is just a mistake." Deny, deny, deny. And you know what? You can't deny the facts. It's on criminal records. It's in court documents. It's on restaurant licenses. You can't deny it. Who's going to do it to their 10-year-old kid? So he finally signed all these documents very recently.
While you're standing there?
While I'm standing there with a notary and someone who's a witness and exercised their name on the affidavits. And I took them and I gave them to the police department. Police department didn't do a thing.
Oh, you're kidding me.
What? No, they did not do a thing. What did they say about it? The excuse that I've gotten from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Department, from all of the, essentially most of the federal law enforcement agencies, is that, hey, we're overwhelmed by this crime. You're one in a million. We don't really care. You got it straightened out. You have a new Social Security number. So we're going to wash our hands of it.
Excuse me?
They're so overwhelmed with this? That's how prevalent this is?
Exactly.
Identity theft from relatives?
It's happening to over 10 million people per year, and as many as half of them, it's occurring within their own families. So law enforcement is completely overwhelmed by this problem.
I would think it would be completely overwhelming to have this problem happen to you, because then you have to deal with changing all these different things. Did you ever get to a point where you just said, "Look, I just want to resign and I just want to be done with it," or are you really harboring some resentment?
Do you really want payback? I'm from Boston, we get payback. But you know, it's one of these things where You know, he's my father. I don't understand why he did it, but eventually, yes. All I want is an apology. I've had to do all the back work. I've had to get my life on track. He's never done a thing for me. I just would like an apology and say, you know what, I'm sorry.
You don't want him thrown in jail?
I mean, in jail, I would love that, but law enforcement doesn't want to do it. What's about it?
What name does he go by?
His name is Randolph E. Waldron, and he's in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Well, everybody, do not eat at his restaurant.
What's the name of it? I don't know if he's owning a restaurant now. Last I knew, it was closed. I heard he was trying to open a produce market.
That's gonna be hard. I mean, he's very popular down there.
They know this.
Yeah, they know.
Very popular. Very, very popular.
Well, now that he's even more well-known.
Yes, yes, well-known.
So if you— what would you suggest people do? Just, I mean, he's checking his credit reports every single day. Sure. We don't want to do that, but what do we do?
Nowadays, the most important thing that everybody does is to make sure that if your state offers it, and 37 states offer it, is to get a credit freeze. A credit freeze actually freezes your credit so that nobody can open up additional accounts under your name. See, here's how it works. Credit, as you and I know it, is wide open. Meaning that at any given time, anybody can check your credit to see if you're a good risk. And at the same time, anybody can check your credit to open up new accounts in your name. Anybody at any given time.
But Randy, what did your mom say?
You know, my mother is—
She knew this guy.
My mother is the greatest woman in the world. She's very accomplished. She's a PhD. I love my mother to death. My mother, thank God for her, she gave me the insight to say, you know what, you have to look at this objectively and deal with the problem. And, you know, I have to say, she— I know she feels bad about it, and I know that she harbors a lot of resentment towards my father, but if it were not for her and my grandparents and the rest of my mother's family, I wouldn't have been able to get through.
You're an inspiration, man. You have such a great attitude.
What are you doing now?
You can tell your parents made some miles.
Thank you.
Yeah. What are you doing now?
Right now— right now I'm working for a Part 135 air taxi operator which is based at Hanscom Field in Bedford, Massachusetts, and I'm doing flight operations and scheduling and some management stuff over there.
How do you protect yourself though if you're a child?
The problem is if you have a credit report as a child, that means that someone's actually opened up accounts under your name. The main thing is that your parent or anybody who's responsible for protecting your information, that they don't give out that Social Security number.
Got it.
A parent that does it, unfortunately, that child who turns 18, 19, 20, 21 is going to have to go through the process of restoring a compromised identity.
All right, well, if you want more tips on how to avoid all of this mess that they've gone through, log on to MJShow.com and we'll give you some good tips.
