The keeper of Wyomingâs birth certificates is warning against websites that act like a middleman for people seeking vital records, but then lift personal information along the way.
âItâs just disheartening sometimes to think people are potentially doing something that they think is not harmful at all,â Guy Beaudoin, Deputy State Registrar for the Wyoming Department of Health, told Cowboy State Daily. âThat data could be used fraudulently, and you wouldnât know about it.â
Hereâs how it works.
A few websites pop up when a person Googles âWyoming Vital Records.â Some of those websites, like vitalrecordsonline.com, offer a service and a form for people to fill out. For a fee, the site sends that form to the Wyoming Department of Health to apply for a birth, death, marriage or divorce certificate on the clientâs behalf.
But the Wyoming Department of Health already offers these applications online for half the price, Beaudoin said.
If the companies are making a profit for each application and coming up above the state department in the search results, thatâs one thing â but third-party companies having a personâs personal data is a whole other concern, said Beaudoin.
He said companies will ask for the clientâs motherâs maiden name and other âthings unique to youâ in applying for the record. Such details are also used as password keys on some websites, including peopleâs online bank accounts.
Beaudoin said the âpassword nexusâ also concerns him.
âItâs just one of those things â as you look at how much information is put out online, our ignorance is sometimes bliss. We donât really know who has access to everything,â he said.
This Town Ainât Big Enough
One such company, Vital Records LLC, was registered in Wyoming until recently.
The business was registered in Wyoming to Registered Agents Inc. in Sheridan. It was operating in the same way by providing a form that the Department of Health already offers, sending it in for a fee, then sending the client his or her certificate.
The state shut that business down.
âWe contacted them to let them know that they did not represent us,â said Beaudoin. Then the Wyoming Department of Health reported the business to the Wyoming attorney generalâs consumer protection group.
About a year later, the company âjust went and no longer renewed the LLC,â he said.
Maybe Thereâs A Link
Beaudoin said he saw an attempted fraud a couple months ago that may have used lifted data from businesses like these.
âWe recently had a woman⌠whoâd claimed to be a Wyoming resident to access well over $1 millionâ in unclaimed property, under Wyomingâs unclaimed property listings, said Beaudoin.
He theorized that the forged Wyoming driverâs license the woman used could have been built from gleaned vital records information.
âKudos to the unclaimed property (department) of Wyoming, they said, âThis doesnât look quite right,ââ he said.
The unclaimed property division was personally familiar with the person the out-of-state woman was purporting to be, Beaudoin added.
$1 Million Just Sitting There
That $1 million-plus is still in the stateâs unclaimed property. Beaudoin said the person to whom it belongs doesnât want it, because having to report it would increase his or her taxes.
Jeff Robertson, administrator of unclaimed property, told Cowboy State Daily he couldnât go into detail on how or why his department denied any property claims.
âWe have received a couple of claims exceeding $1 million over the past year that have not been paid to date,â said Roberton in a Jan. 9 email. âWe have asked these claimants to provide additional information/documentation to support their claim that they are the rightful owners, but to date we have not received sufficient information to pay the claims.â
Asking for more and better documentation is âcommon practiceâ when the department either receives fewer documents than required or the documents are âquestionable,â he added.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
