When Jason Truxel discovered his credit report was loaded with mysterious debt, he called his dad.
He had depended on Michael Truxel for two decades, since his mother moved out of the Vermilion home that Jason and Michael Truxel shared.
After Jason Truxel was denied a mortgage in Alabama last summer, he figured his dad would know what to do. Jason Truxel drove to his dad's home in Dillonvale, Ohio, near the West Virginia border, he said.
In an old dresser drawer there he found a stack of 15 credit cards rubber-banded together.
"Every single card had my name on it," said Truxel, 27. "The whole dresser was nothing but bills, and all of them were in my name."
Michael Truxel denies any wrongdoing. When reached Thursday at the gas station where he works, he said he hasn't seen his son in years.
"I have no clue," he said.
Cleveland police, though, are investigating. So, said Jason Truxel, is the U.S. Secret Service, which besides protecting the president also investigates credit card fraud.
Nearly 10 million Americans were victims of identity theft last year, a 22 percent jump from 2007, according to Javelin Strategy & Research, a financial-services company that attributes the increase in part to the struggling economy.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, Ohio ranked 32nd among states in 2008, with 71.7 complaints of identity theft for every 100,000 residents.
Of those victims, more than half have their identity stolen by people they know, said Sue McConnell, a spokeswoman for the Cleveland Better Business Bureau.
"We tend to think this is something that happens to you because of somebody you did business with online or someone getting your credit card information," McConnell said. "It is actually something that happens to many people because of a relative, someone close to them has used the information."
Young people, she said, make especially alluring targets, since they have clean credit histories.
The tale Truxel tells, buttressed by letters from credit agencies, financial documents and the Internal Revenue Service, spans a decade and more than $80,000.
Even before it began, Michael Truxel was charged with misuse of a credit card in Vermilion in 1992, according to court records. The case was dismissed in 1994 after restitution was paid.
"He was a big manipulator. . . . He got credit cards and stuff in my name," said Sandra Sylvester, who said she lived with the Truxels in Vermilion for about eight months in 1990. Sylvester said Michael Truxel found and copied her personal information, then requested a Sears card in her name after she moved out.
"He had it all planned," she said.
Jason Truxel 'was 13 in 1995 when a credit card account was opened in his name, a credit report shows.
The report details 23 credit cards, with balances from $250 to $5,000. It shows Truxel's name misspelled, with two Ls; addresses all over Ohio; and birth dates 10 years before Truxel's.
Then there's a house near Freeport, in eastern Ohio, that was put in Jason Truxel's name in 1996; a $2,900 mortgage for a Daytona Beach timeshare condo signed for in Jason Truxel's name in 1999; and a 2008 tax rebate for $3,800 that Jason Truxel says he never received, though the IRS shows it was cashed, signed for in his name.
His dad always filed his tax returns, Jason Truxel said, slouching on his mom's couch in Cleveland's West Park neighborhood, stacks of papers spread on the coffee table in front of him.
His mother and stepfather back up the story with anecdotes of their own about Michael Truxel. They want to clear the younger Truxel's credit -- and future.
Jason Truxel, who graduated from high school in 2001, said he can't afford an apartment, and most of the jobs he's applied for require credit checks. Employers lose interest when background checks show he owes thousands of dollars.
He was unaware of the debt for years, while he worked at the same gas station as his dad. He remained unaware when he moved to Florida and Alabama, where he worked as a park ranger, groundskeeper and gas station attendant.
Now in Cleveland, he has filed police reports and sent letters to credit companies, pleading with them to clear his name.
So far, two companies deleted his accounts. Others passed his accounts to debt collectors. He sent pay stubs to the IRS, showing he was working in Alabama when the rebate was cashed in Ohio in March 2008.
"I've written all the letters, made all the phone calls I'm supposed to," he said. "And nothing."
Truxel hasn't spoken much to his dad since that August day when he found the credit cards and drove to his dad's gas station. His father, he said, told him he would never be able to prove anything.
Identity theft is notoriously tough to prosecute, said Robert Siciliano, an identity-theft expert and author of "The Safety Minute: 01."
"Assault, murder, violence, there's somebody who saw something, there's something to follow," Siciliano said. "When it comes to financial crimes . . . the problem here is there's such an intense amount of research necessary. It's an insurmountable issue."
Meanwhile Truxel is waiting, growing more and more discouraged, he said. "He flat-out stole my identity."