‘A terrible reverse lottery,’ says Los Angeles victim of employment identity theft — what do to if it happens to you

When you think of identity theft, you likely worry about thieves draining your savings accounts or racking up debt on credit cards taken out in your name. You probably don’t imagine someone trying to get their hands on your Social Security number simply to work.

But that’s what happened to 46-year-old Los Angeles resident Dr. Warris Bokhari (1).

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After receiving 2025 tax forms from a company he hadn’t worked for, Bokhari was left with a financial and administrative headache.

It’s like “a terrible reverse lottery,” he told CNBC (2), “Your identity can be used by someone else for their gains, and you’re left with bills and debts that you try to undo.”

Employment identity theft takes place when someone steals your personal information, including your Social Security number, in order to get a job and earn income. It could be someone who cannot otherwise legally work or a job seeker that has trouble getting through employer background checks (3). Either way, once their income is reported to the IRS, victims, like Bokhari, end up getting the tax bill.

As Bokhari told CNBC, in February, he received a Form 1099-K from Uber Technologies listing about $2,300 in gross income for work in November and December of 2025. The trouble is, Bokhari, the cofounder and CEO of health care technology firm Claimable, says he’d never driven for the ride-sharing service.

After weeks of trying to get answers, Uber support informed him they’d “found signs of identity theft,” according to a message reviewed by CNBC (4).

In a statement directly to the news outlet, the company said, “We’re aware that some people have reported receiving 1099s despite not driving or earning income with Uber, which may indicate their personal information was used fraudulently,” adding that a webpage has been set up specifically for “1099 delivery error” inquiries (5).

Bokhani is by no means alone in his discovery of “phantom income,” as he put it to CNBC.

Employment or wage-related fraud is on the rise in the U.S. According to identity theft tracking by the Federal Trade Commission, 35,937 cases were reported in 2025, a 49.6% increase since 2021, when a total of 24,009 cases were reported (6).