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Synthetic identity fraud

What $35 billion looks like.

Synthetic identity fraud cost an estimated $35 billion in 2023. That number is hard to picture, so here it is as a stack of $1 bills, one on top of another. Scroll to build it.

Skip to the end  ·  Source at the bottom of the page.

The stack, step by step

  1. An average car

    4.8 ft · $13,400 · less than 0.01% of the way

    An average car. About $13,400 in $1 bills.

  2. A school bus

    10.5 ft · $29,300 · less than 0.01% of the way

    A school bus. You have stacked about $29,300.

  3. The Statue of Liberty, including the pedestal

    305 ft · $851,200 · less than 0.01% of the way

    The Statue of Liberty, pedestal and all. $851,200.

  4. The Eiffel Tower

    1,083 ft · $3.0 million · less than 0.01% of the way

    The Eiffel Tower. $3.0 million.

  5. The Empire State Building

    1,454 ft · $4.1 million · 0.01% of the way

    The Empire State Building. $4.1 million. Still less than one tenth of one percent of the way.

  6. The Burj Khalifa

    2,717 ft · $7.6 million · 0.02% of the way

    The tallest building on Earth. You are 0.02% of the way there.

  7. Mount Everest

    29,032 ft · $81.0 million · 0.23% of the way

    The top of Mount Everest. $81.0 million, and the stack keeps going.

  8. Where airliners cruise

    35,000 ft · $97.7 million · 0.28% of the way

    Where the planes cruise. $97.7 million.

  9. The edge of space, the Karman line

    62 miles · $913.6 million · 2.6% of the way

    The edge of space. $913.6 million. Still not a billion.

  10. The International Space Station

    254 miles · $3.7 billion · 10.7% of the way

    The International Space Station. $3.7 billion. About a tenth of the way.

  11. The top of the stack

    2,375 miles (3,823 km) · $35 billion · the whole stack

    9 times higher than the space station. Laid on its side it would stretch from New York almost to Los Angeles.

$35 billion. Every year. Most of it written off as ordinary credit losses, so nobody ever goes looking for it.

DoubleCheck reads 36 months of your own core banking history, on your own machine, to find the borrowers who never existed.

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Source: FiVerity (2024), 2024 Synthetic Identity Fraud Report, reprinted in Federal Reserve, Synthetic Identity Fraud Mitigation Toolkit. This is a third-party industry estimate, not an official statistic. Bill thickness: Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

How the stack is worked out: one $1 bill is 0.0043 inches thick, so 35 billion of them stand 2,375 miles (3,823 km) tall. The scale changes from step to step so each landmark fits on the screen, but the stack and the landmark beside it are always drawn to the same scale.