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First, they stole identifies, then this husband-and-wife team committed financial crimes in their victims' names. Is your identity safe?

Tall, white-haired and bearded, the real Edward M. Peters Jr. looks the part of a medieval-history scholar--especially in his cluttered office, where towering shelves of books include a few volumes of his own with titles like Inquisition and Torture. At lunch in the University of Pennsylvania's faculty dining room in downtown Philadelphia, the professor lights up a Chesterfield, orders crab cakes and a martini, and says he'd like to "beat the hell out of the crook" who stole his identity.

The inmate known as Edward M. Peters Jr. is shorter by several inches and younger by a dozen years, with a beard just beginning to gray. His real name--the one that appears on his economics degree from Syracuse University--is Roger Cullen. But Peters was the alias on the warrant when he was arrested, so Peters is his name in Delaware's prison records. "When I go to see him, I have to ask for Ed Peters," says his lawyer.

That name was just one of dozens that Roger Cullen and his wife, Cheryl, adopted during an identity-theft spree that spanned at least six years and seven states. A modern-day Bonnie and Clyde armed with vital statistics rather than automatic pistols, they hit banks and credit card companies for tens--possibly hundreds--of thousands of dollars, and jeopardized the financial life of each of their victims.

An escalating threat

The Cullens' story--the ease with which they morphed from one purloined identity to another and the serendipity of their ultimate arrest--is an indisputable warning: Identity theft is becoming more and more pervasive as government and business increasingly rely on numbers to identify citizens and consumers, and as technology simplifies the collection and dissemination of personal information. A support group for identity-theft victims founded last fall by CalPIRG, a California consumer-advocacy organization, received 8,000 to 10,000 calls for help in its first six months. Trans Union, one of the three major credit bureaus, says calls to its fraud division have risen from 300 a month in 1992 to 40,000 a month this year.

For victims, unraveling the damage typically takes a minimum of several days of phone calls and paperwork when the fraud involves just a credit card or two. But for those whose names are used to open checking accounts, rent apartments, or get driver's licenses or jobs, the cleanup can be a devastating burden that never ends (see the box on page 70). Stained records play havoc with victims' attempts to rent an apartment, get phone service, open a bank account, cash a check or qualify for a loan. If the thief uses your name to get a job, the IRS can come after you for tax due on the earnings. The worst of all scenarios: You could be arrested for crimes committed in your name.

So maybe the real Edward Peters was lucky. Apart from Delaware's prison records, his name has appeared on at least one fraudulent bank account, a drunk-driving citation in Maryland, and arrest warrants in Delaware, Florida and Tennessee. Amazingly, he was unaware of any of this until a phone call from Kiplinger's broke the news. The arrest warrants have been withdrawn, eliminating the most hair-raising hazard: "Poor Edward Peters. He runs a red light in Florida and eight cops are ready to shoot him if he sneezes," says Detective Scott Garland, one of the Delaware state troopers who apprehended the Cullens.

Peters and most of the others the Cullens impersonated had a common bond: They were profiled in Who's Who in America, a directory of prominent Americans that includes biographical information such as birth date, place of birth, mother's maiden name and home address. "It gives enough information in the biography to request a copy of a birth certificate," Roger Cullen says in a videotaped police interview obtained by Kiplinger's. Not surprisingly, the Cullens racked up a rather distinguished list of victims. "These are all people who obviously are creditworthy," Roger says.

(The Cullens declined requests for interviews. But Roger relented just before we went to press; see the box "Roger and me". Most of the details in this story come from police and court records and from interviews with police, attorneys, victims and others connected with the case.)

Fire? What fire?

The Cullens' life on the run ended March 19, 1997, on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Detectives Scott Garland and Dennis Spillan met eye-stinging smoke the moment they burst through the door of the Cullens' home, a nicely furnished Victorian on the Chesapeake Bay. It was about 8:30 A.M., and the Cullens acted as if they'd just been awakened. "She turns over like she's just getting up and there's black soot around her nose and mouth," says Garland. "I ask, `Where's the fire?' And she says, `What fire?'"

In a second-floor bathroom, the tub and sink were clogged with water and charred paper. A blue plastic trashcan stuffed with smoldering papers had melted in on itself, ironically preserving the contents. In a three-and-a-half-hour search, the detectives seized boxes of bank checks, birth certificates, marriage and driver's licenses, gift certificates, mailbox rental contracts--and about $6,000 in cash.

The only clues to the Cullens' true identities--an anniversary card and some errand lists--were found in a night-stand drawer. The names on the arrest warrant were Edward M. Peters and Patricia Ann Mathews, names the pair had repeatedly used.

They were charged with financial crimes committed in Delaware in 1996 and 1997, but court records show a much longer criminal trail. Roger was arrested under an alias in Florida in 1992 on charges of fraud and forgery--and jumped bail. He pleaded guilty in 1986 to charges of breach of trust in Tennessee, and was sentenced to five years' probation and ordered to pay restitution of $12,500. He never fully paid, according to a 1990 arrest warrant. Since 1993 Florida has been after Cheryl for fraud, perjury and obstruction of justice.

"I'm sure there are many unsolved cases that we don't know about," says Garland. "A lot of banks don't even report fraud. They write off the loss and never file a report."

Anatomy of a bank fraud

The checks started bouncing on October 14, 1996. Over the previous seven days, "Patricia Mathews" had deposited 11 checks totaling $20,555 into her checking account at Wilmington Trust Co.--all written on a long-closed, out-of-state account in the name of William M. Cash. "Mathews" began drawing against the deposits right away, even though the checks hadn't cleared--and never would.

She hauled in nearly $19,000 from checks, ATM withdrawals and debit-card purchases before the account was frozen on October 15. The largest draws, ranging from $2,594 to $4,110, were cash advances at Atlantic City casinos and a racetrack in Dover. The Cullens didn't go to gamble. Rather, they were following the dictum of Depression-era thief Willie Sutton, who robbed banks because that's where the money was. "At a casino, you can draw out thousands at a time," explains Roger. "At an ATM, you can get only $500 a day."

The Cullens had opened the "William M. Cash" account at Membership Bank, in Portland, Ore., years earlier and had written a few bad checks before the bank closed it around 1994. But they still had a supply of leftover checks. (When we called the real William M. Cash, a historian listed in Who's Who, he had no inkling his identity had been filched.)

Wilmington Trust also took a hit in Edward Peters's name. I had gotten maybe $10,000 out of that account," Cullen says in the police interview. He also acknowledges similar frauds against the Ocean City and Denton branches of the First National Bank of Maryland and PNC Bank in Maryland.

Though neither Cash nor Peters was burned by the Cullens' crimes, either could have been pegged as a bad-check writer in a check-verification database, such as the ones maintained by TeleCheck and Equifax Check Services. Deadbeats are identified by name, account number, driver's-license number and sometimes social security number, so bad checks "could be tied back to the real consumer if the numbers are the same," says Jalinna Jones, a spokeswoman for TeleCheck. Merchants often consult such databases before accepting checks, and banks review them before opening new accounts.

A con artist's gift plan