There was an article about someone who found out through one of those ancestry sites that they had been the victim of a “non-custodial kidnapping” by one parent and a step-parent twenty-five years before. It rocked their world, and suddenly, having to jump through hoops when their social security number had them reported as “dead” when they were 21 started making sense. (They had assumed clerical error, but after being missing for 17 years, they had been declared dead in the state they were kidnapped from.) The whole thing was crazy, and the victim was able to reconnect with with family via Facebook thanks to the Ancestry people providing names. Not sure if anyone was actually prosecuted since it was such an “old cold case”.

My question was a fairly simple one. Why wasn’t anyone monitoring the tax returns and social security number of the people involved? Seems like a simple look, and taxes were filed for DECADES.

Not sure what the FBI does, but apparently “child kidnapping cases” were not high on the list - the kidnapper moved to the same city where “grandma” lived, so it should have been an easy one to solve, if they had been interested in doing so.