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Dead man working
Discuss employment-law issues such as family leave, overtime, disabilities law, harassment, immigration and termination.
I just found out that a former employee had been working under a SSN that actually belonged to a deceased person. As an employer, am I under any obligation to verify the accuracy of a person's SSN? T
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Dead man working
posted at 7/29/1999 10:44 PM EDT
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Posts: 16
First: 7/29/1999 Last: 10/23/2002 |
I just found out that a former employee had been working under a SSN that actually belonged to a deceased person. As an employer, am I under any obligation to verify the accuracy of a person's SSN? The documentation that he presented looked absolutely genuine. I kept a copy. I thought that SSA would catch such a thing when my company reported its withholding information. (Obviously, I am not a payroll expert.) What if I decided to run a check on all the SSN's of the company employees and found more? What would I be required to do in that case? Should I just let sleeping dogs lie, or wait to trip over them before acting? |
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Dead man working
posted at 8/1/1999 7:11 PM EDT
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Posts: 833
First: 6/11/1999 Last: 8/23/2001 |
I've run into this before; you're expected to exercise reasonable diligence in inspecting the documents presented for I-9 purposes. If you were to take an adverse action based on your claim that the documents are "fake", your employee's lawyer would be first to prove that you are not an expert.
Tell your employee that there seems to be some discrepancy between the documents presented, and the Social Security Administrations records. Explain that, until it's rectified, you would not be able to allow the employee to work further. Give them some time to get it cleared up, and tell them to return when it is. If they come back with a new number or an application for a new number, and no letter of explanation, you'd have termination grounds for falsifiying the I-9 and the app (assuming you've checked both to verify that the same dead number appears on both, and it's not just a transcription error). As I understand it, you are in no way obligated to report the individual - you're responsibility ends with your discontinuance of employment... and be careful with reference checks on this individual, when discussing the reason for separation. |
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Dead man working
posted at 8/2/1999 12:49 AM EDT
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Posts: 2217
First: 6/16/1999 Last: 12/13/2001 |
You're right that your recently acquired knowledge that the employee's SSN may be fake creates an obligation for you to look into his/her right to work. Check with an immigration specialist on the details, but essentially you need to tell the employee that he has a time certain (I think 3 days) to present 2 of the 13 I-9 documents to verify his identity and right to work in the USA.
With respect to your other employees, do you have reason to believe some of them have falsified their I-9s? If so, you probably have an obligation to look into it with respect to those employees. |
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Dead man working
posted at 8/2/1999 1:49 AM EDT
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Posts: 833
First: 6/11/1999 Last: 8/23/2001 |
Just to embellish Matt's wisdom.. I'd refrain from basing your search on a protected characteristic. Let's say your situation involves someone from a particular country - pulling everyone's I-9 based on their national origin may pose a problem for you. Because a number of people are not eligible for employment does not alleviate you of your responsibility to refrain from making employment (or de-employment) decisions based on protected characterisitcs.
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Dead man working
posted at 8/2/1999 4:28 AM EDT
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Posts: 16
First: 7/29/1999 Last: 10/23/2002 |
Thanks for the input everyone. This affects a former employee, who up and quit very quickly and quietly.
I am not necessarily questioning this person's right to work in the USA, I think he's hiding from some other (legal) element. If I decide to check other SSN's, I would do the entire organization. I have heard that you can purchase good looking fake SS cards on the streets in LA without too much trouble. |
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