‘I just want to cry’: Woman fights over $200K in medical bills after someone stole her identity

PHOENIX (KPHO/Gray News) - A Phoenix woman says someone has stolen her identity and has charged thousands of dollars’ worth of medical care in her name.

“The bills are outrageous. I get a new bill every day, and I just want to cry,” Jennifer O’Connor said. “For just the surgery, it was $217,000.”

O’Connor thumbed through a stack of papers, including other bills for $32,000 and $9,300.

She says she has lost track of the total.

“I’m getting bills from CT scans, bills from anesthesiologists, different doctors that she saw at the hospital. It’s just overwhelming,” O’Connor said. “She used my insurance at Banner because I have Banner insurance. At HonorHealth, she did not use insurance, so she just gave them my information and said, ‘I don’t have insurance.’”

O’Connor said the first sign of a problem was when she received a bill from an anesthesiologist.

“Twenty-four hundred dollars for anesthesia, and I’m like, anesthesia? When did I go under anesthesia?” she said. “I looked more into it, and all I had to do to get into it was put in my date of birth, and bam. There’s the bill.”

The real O’Connor is a respiratory therapist at a Banner facility. Her supervisor submitted a letter to their employer to prove the real Jennifer O’Connor was on the clock when the imposter O’Connor was getting medical care.

“I just know I was working my butt off and I wasn’t getting screws in my legs and on fentanyl, that’s for sure,” she said. “It wasn’t me. None of this was me.”

Still, the paper trail and the police reports that O’Connor filed with area authorities have not been enough to unravel the mess.

“I get two emails from Banner saying they’re going to garnish my wages for a visit at Banner Boswell ER for $150, and a $36 bill from Banner Desert,” O’Connor said. “They just sent it to collections.”

If it sounds like a nightmare, it is. But O’Connor is not alone.

“It is getting easier and easier to obtain the data of a legitimate person and then create the fake identity,” Eva Velasquez, the president and CEO of the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center, said. “When it comes to medical identity theft, it does get tricky because we don’t have a central repository for all of our medical records, so I encourage people to focus their energy on just protecting their identity, on the whole.”

According to the FBI’s Internet Crimes Complaint Center, reports for identity theft are declining, year-over-year, in both the number of complaints and the amount of money lost.

Still, it remains critical to take preventative steps to protect your identity.

Agents suggest unique passwords for all accounts, as well as multi-factor authentication.

The FBI says it is also important to protect physical documents with personal information. That includes securing your mailbox.

If you become a victim of medical identity theft, keep meticulous records.

“The unfortunate reality is that you must resolve this directly with the entity where the fraud occurred,” Velasquez said. “Call back as often as you feel comfortable doing, asking, ‘What is the status of this? What do you need from me to prove that I am me and did not receive this care, these goods, or this prescription?’ And then, unfortunately, the onus is often on you, the victim, to supply that information, to do your own investigation and build that case.”

While medical identity theft can be costly, it has serious health concerns.

“You potentially now have mixed medical records with the thief, and you could get improper care and an improper diagnosis,” Velasquez said. “You could also not have the ability to get necessary prescriptions filled or to get access to necessary medical equipment because the thief has already gotten those things in your name.”

That’s what the real Jennifer O’Connor fears the most.

“All her medical stuff is on file. Not mine,” she said. “If I was in a car accident on the way home, God forbid, and I was out of it and needed blood products, I could die because she probably doesn’t have the same blood type as me, and that terrifies me.”

Representatives with HonorHealth and Banner have not immediately responded to questions regarding O’Connor’s case or the companies’ medical identity theft policies.

The Mesa Police Department said it has not identified any suspects, and the case is currently inactive.

Phoenix police and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office say investigations remain open regarding O’Connor’s situation with evidence still being collected.

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