Synthetic ID

Synthetic fraud is the broader crime enabled by synthetic IDs usually financial, involving stolen credit, loans, or merchant fraud. It’s not identity theft in the traditional sense but rather identity invention.

Red flags include SSNs with no credit history, multiple accounts tied to one device, inconsistent identity elements (like mismatched names and addresses), and identities with no digital footprint. Machine learning models can help flag anomalies across networks.

Synthetic identities can “season” over time, appearing trustworthy as they build fake credit. Since they don’t correspond to real individuals, fraud losses often go unreported. Many fraud systems still focus on detecting impersonation rather than fabrication.