Pa. man on trail of identity thief

The unusual news of a Thomas Parkin caught in New York impersonating his dead mother to collect her Social Security struck Thomas Parkin of Plymouth Meeting uncomfortably close to home.

Almost a decade ago, the Pennsylvania Parkin reported his identity stolen - and the pattern of fraudulent finances over the years turned out to match details in news stories about the Parkin who impersonated his own mother.

Pennsylvania's Parkin contacted New York prosecutors, who are investigating whether the New York Parkin, 49, stole the identity of the Pennsylvania one.

The New York Parkin allegedly turned up in a Department of Motor Vehicles office in Brooklyn in April, dressed as his mother - who had died in 2003 - to renew her driver's license. He was indicted June 17 on charges that he hauled in about $117,000 from her Social Security checks and rent subsidies over the years.

Jonah Bruno, spokesman for the Brooklyn District Attorney's office, would not say what, if anything, prosecutors have found to connect the men, but confirmed that the investigation was continuing.

The men are not known to be related.

The local Parkin, 51, said a prosecutor told him that his personal information had turned up in one of the New York Parkin's several bankruptcy filings, and that investigators were trying to find out how it got there.

"He said it raised the hair on the back of his neck," Pennsylvania's Parkin said. "It was just too coincidental."

If confirmation turns up, the Plymouth Meeting man and his family could finally have an answer to why a series of bills has been coming to them over the years for Brooklyn services - from cell phones to an ambulance trip - and real-estate matters.

"We've never even been to Brooklyn," said Leslie Parkin, a nurse at Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania and the wife of the local Thomas Parkin.

The apparent identity theft started showing up in the form of bills from a Macy's in North Jersey a few months after the Plymouth Meeting man's had a hospital stay in the late 1990s. The local Parkin said police at the time told him about that hospital staffers' having been arrested for selling patient information.

Ever since, he said, his life has been a series of credit-report watches and fending off someone else's bill collectors - including one holding an unpaid $50,000 home-equity loan for a New York address.

"I don't know that this will ever be completely cleared up," Pennsylvania's Thomas Parkin said.

A Plymouth Township police spokeswoman said the department's most recent investigation of the Parkin matter, in 2007, found no new evidence of credit fraud to investigate.