Anndorie Sachs Is Accused Of Being An Unfit Parent

The story of Anndorie Sachs is unsettling, to say the least. It all began when Sachs (a mother of four who was attending school for a biomedical engineering degree) received a call from the Salt Lake City Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS). It seemed that someone answering Sachs’ name and description had given birth to a premature baby girl, who subsequently tested positive for methamphetamine. The mother had abruptly fled from the hospital leaving the infant and a $10,000 bill behind, and DCFS wanted some answers.

Of course, Sachs was not the mother of this child. The baby girl belonged to a woman named Dorthy Bell Moran, who’d stolen Sachs’ driver’s license from her car two months before. DCFS, however, was preparing to submit paperwork to declare Sachs an unfit mother and put her four kids into state custody. Sachs’ 7-year-old daughter was also pulled out of school by DCFS agents and subjected to questioning.

Eventually, the issue was cleared up, but Sachs’ problems persisted. Her medical records had been changed to include Moran’s health profile, including her blood type and other information. Sachs can’t even view her own medical records to ensure the information has been changed back — the hospitals involved won’t let her, ironically, because it could compromise the identity thief’s own rights to medical privacy. 

“It’s especially scary,” said Sachs, in an interview with WebMD, “because I have a blood-clotting disorder. If a doctor gave me the wrong blood type, it could be fatal.”

Your Takeaway: Medical identity theft is a little-known type of identity theft that can have particularly devastating consequences. In a case like the Sachs fiasco, where the victim has a serious medical condition, the effect could be deadly. While Sachs certainly didn’t mean for it to happen, she helped the identity thief by leaving her license somewhere that it could be stolen. If you never allow your license to leave your possession for any reason, however, you’ll be exponentially decreasing your odds of having your identity stolen in a similar manner.