She didn't live happily ever after

From the NY Post:

Anna Vargas thought she was happily married — she just didn’t know she was “married” to four guys.

The 37-year-old Queens mom has been the victim of an identity-theft nightmare, in which a parade of mysterious creeps arranged fake marriages by using her birth certificate which she lost some 16 years ago.

Vargas had no idea what was going on — until she tried to get married in 2004 and was heartbroken to find her application for a license rejected by the City Clerk’s Office.

She was turned down after records showed she was already been “married” twice in 1996, once to a man from Mexico and once to a man from Ecuador.

It wasn’t clear why the men got married with women using her identity, but often such ID theft involves immigration scams.

New York's Puerto Ricans must get new birth certificates

From NY1:

Identity thieves interested in buying someone else's birth certificate may not have to look very hard, as Puerto Ricans in New York say a certificate from Puerto Rico is easy to find.

The government of Puerto Rico says hundreds of thousands of copies of birth certificates from the island are floating around unprotected and can sell for as much as $10,000.

"Puerto Ricans are selling the birth [certificates]," said one Bronx resident. "They got so many in here pretending to be Puerto Rican, but they are not."

An old law required Puerto Rican residents to leave original copies of their birth certificates in various public and private offices as they filled out paperwork, which opened the door to massive identity theft.

Puerto Rican-Born New Yorkers Have To Get New Birth Certificates
"If you physically look Latino or physically look Puerto Rican, and you show up with a Puerto Rican birth certificate, no questions are asked," said Bronx Congressman Jose Serrano. "Because Puerto Ricans, as you know, are born American citizens and can just leave Puerto Rico and travel to the United States."

Now, a new law that takes effect on July 1 will force anyone born in Puerto Rico to get a new birth certificate.

"The objective of this law is it will invalidate the old birth certificates so that they will lose their value on the black market," said Luis Balzac of the office of Puerto Rico's governor.