Released: March 19, 2008

A good name dragged down

Source: Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post (Free Registration)

One man went into a Glen Burnie, Md., Toyota dealership to buy a car, only to be told that a name check revealed he was on a U.S. Treasury Department watchlist of suspected terrorists and drug dealers. He had to be “checked for tattoos,” he said, to make sure he wasn’t the suspect.

An 18-year-old found he could not open an account to accept credit card payments for his fledgling technology consulting business because his name was similar to that of a Libyan official on the watchlist.  A former U.S. Navy officer who served in the Persian Gulf and whose father was killed in the Korean War when he was a child, found himself locked out of his PayPal account because his name was similar to one on the watchlist.

“What do I need to do to remove my name from this list?” the officer wrote to Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which compiles the list. He signed off, “An EXTREMELY insulted veteran of the U.S. Navy.”

More American consumers have gotten caught up in a special brand of watchlist purgatory because their names are similar to ones on OFAC’s list of “specially designated nationals,” according to e-mails and other documents released under court order yesterday. 

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