Identity Theft, Debts You Never Owed, and Bankruptcy in Florida: What the New Social Security Law Changes and What It Does Not

One number, three doors

A Social Security number opens your benefits, your credit, and your taxes. That is why it is the top target for thieves, and why identity theft so often arrives in a bankruptcy consultation disguised as ordinary debt. Javelin Strategy and Research's 2025 Identity Fraud Study put combined identity fraud and scam losses at $47 billion in 2024. A fair share of that money shows up months later as collection letters, credit card balances, and even Social Security overpayment notices addressed to people who never opened the account or received the benefit.

Congress has now done one specific thing about the Social Security side of the problem. On October 7, 2026, the President signed H.R. 5345, the Improving Social Security's Service to Victims of Identity Theft Act. Florida filers should know what it does, because it is narrower than the title suggests, and because what it leaves undone is exactly the work that has to happen before a bankruptcy petition is signed.

What H.R. 5345 does

The law adds Section 714 to Title VII of the Social Security Act. Starting 180 days after enactment, in early April 2027, the Commissioner must provide a single point of contact to anyone whose number has been misused, including misuse to obtain retirement, disability, or SSI benefits, misuse that corrupted the person's SSA records, a request for a new number because of misuse, and a Social Security card lost in the mail on its way to the person who requested it.

The point of contact is a team of specially trained employees, not one individual. The membership can change. What cannot change is continuity: the team must keep the case history intact, coordinate with the other SSA units involved, track the case to completion, and stay accountable for it until it is resolved.

What it does not do

It does not recover your money. It does not punish the thief. There is no criminal provision in it; identity theft remains a felony in Florida under section 817.568 of the Florida Statutes, and prosecution is a decision for law enforcement. It does not reach the credit bureaus, the creditors, or the IRS. Recovery still runs through the Federal Trade Commission's identitytheft.gov, and the credit cleanup still runs through the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Do not file bankruptcy on a thief's debts

The first thing to establish in any consultation where identity theft is suspected is which debts are actually yours. Bankruptcy is a remedy for your debts. Using it on someone else's leaves a bankruptcy on your record for ten years to erase accounts that federal law would have removed in four business days.

Under 15 U.S.C. § 1681c-2, a credit bureau that receives four things must block the fraudulent entries from your file within four business days: proof of your identity, a copy of your identity theft report, a list of the entries that resulted from the theft, and your statement that you did not make those transactions. The identity theft report can be the FTC report generated at identitytheft.gov or a report filed with a Florida law enforcement agency. Once blocked, the entries may not be reported, and the bureau must notify the creditor that furnished them.

Pair the block with a security freeze. Under 15 U.S.C. § 1681c-1(i), the freeze is free at all three national bureaus, placed within one business day of an online request. Florida's own statute, section 501.005, says the same thing. The freeze stops the next account from being opened while you sort out the last one.

Only after the thief's accounts are blocked do you know what your real debt is. For many people the real number is manageable and bankruptcy is unnecessary. For others it is not, and the case goes forward on a clean schedule.

If you do file: how the forms treat identity theft

List every creditor who claims you owe, including the ones you dispute. Schedule E/F asks for all unsecured claims, and the instructions require you to list a debt even if you dispute it. A creditor on a fraudulent account that is left off the schedules does not receive notice, and in a Chapter 7 no-asset case the debt is generally covered by the discharge anyway, but leaving it off invites a later argument. The correct treatment is to list the creditor, check the box marking the claim as disputed, and describe the basis as identity theft. The notice the creditor receives then does double duty: it is notice of the bankruptcy and notice of your dispute.

Attach your identity theft report to your file, not your petition. The report is evidence for the trustee and for any creditor that later tries to collect. It is not a schedule and does not need to be filed with the court, but your attorney should have it before the petition is signed.

Your Social Security number will be verified. Official Form 121, Your Statement About Your Social Security Numbers, is filed with the petition but kept out of the public record. At the meeting of creditors, the trustee checks your photo identification and your original Social Security card or an acceptable substitute. This is where the second scenario in H.R. 5345 bites: if your replacement card was lost in the mail, you may not have the document the trustee wants. Request the replacement before filing, and if the card does not arrive, ask SSA in writing to document the loss. After April 2027, that request should produce a named team.

Check whether someone has filed in your name. It is uncommon, but a thief with your number can file a bankruptcy case as you. A PACER search of the three Florida districts takes a few minutes. If a case exists that you did not file, notify the clerk and the United States Trustee for that district in writing before you file your own.

If someone collected Social Security benefits in your name

This is the scenario the new law was written for, and it has a bankruptcy consequence. When SSA discovers that benefits were paid on your record to someone else, its systems may generate an overpayment notice addressed to you, demanding repayment of money you never received.

Do not treat that notice as a debt to be discharged. Contest it in writing within the time the notice gives, by requesting reconsideration and stating that the benefits were obtained by a third party through misuse of your number, with your FTC report attached. Report the fraud to the SSA Office of the Inspector General through its online form. Once Section 714 is in force, this is precisely the kind of case the new team is required to track to completion.

If an overpayment notice is already outstanding when you file, it is listed on Schedule E/F like any other unsecured claim, marked disputed, and it is dischargeable unless SSA proves under 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(2) that you obtained the benefits by fraud. A victim did not. But a discharge of a disputed overpayment is a poor substitute for getting the record corrected, because the earnings and benefit history on your number stays wrong until SSA fixes it. For how your own benefits are treated in a case, see Social Security Benefits and Bankruptcy in Florida.

After the discharge

Identity theft does not stop at the discharge order, and neither does the Fair Credit Reporting Act. If a blocked account reappears, if a discharged fraudulent debt is reported as owing, or if a collector resumes contact on an account that was never yours, the remedies in our posts on pre-bankruptcy credit report violations and common credit reporting violations after bankruptcy apply with more force, not less, because you now hold a court order and an identity theft report.

Frequently asked questions

A collector is suing me in county court on an account I never opened. Should I file bankruptcy to stop it? Not as a first step. Answer the suit, raise identity theft as a defense, and serve the collector with your identity theft report. Many of these suits are dismissed once the collector sees the report. If you have other debts that justify a filing, the automatic stay will stop the suit too, but file for your debts, not the thief's.

Will the bankruptcy trustee think the fraudulent accounts are mine? Not if the schedules say they are disputed and your attorney has the identity theft report. Trustees see identity theft regularly. What draws attention is an unexplained account, not a documented one.

Does H.R. 5345 give me a lawyer or an advocate at Social Security? No. It gives you a team of SSA employees responsible for your case. They work for the agency. Your advocate is still you, in writing, with copies kept.

Before deciding whether your real debt, after the thief's accounts are blocked, justifies a filing, the free Florida means test calculator takes about three minutes and shows whether Chapter 7 is realistic before you pay for a consultation.