Mitchell man arrested for identity theft

A Mitchell man is being held on $100,000 bond after being charged with identity theft. Scotts Bluff County court documents say 27 year old Estaban Palanco, an undocumented foreign national, used a social security number belonging to an Oakland, California women when he was employed with Leo Hoehn Farms.

Hoehn asked the Sheriff's office to investigate when Palanco filed a worker's compensation claim against his company and he discovered the social security number was not under Palanco's name. The document says a deportation officer told the Sheriff's office Palanco was in their data base as Margarito Banuelos under the same social security number.

Palanco later admitted to a sheriff's investigator he did not have a social security card and was in the country illegally although he did not provide information on how he got the social security number he was using. Hoehn reported Palanco had worked for him for 21 months and had made over $44,000 using the stolen social security number.

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