Is someone using your name and social security number to work at a job you know nothing about?

It's happening to people across Charlotte, and now some of those people are getting letters from the Internal Revenue Service saying they owe thousands of dollars in taxes for jobs they don't have.

Eyewitness News reporter Jim Bradley spoke with victims and found out how you can protect yourself.

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It's been almost four years since Oscar Montesdeoca lost his wallet. Only now is he finding out how big a loss it was.

Montesdeoca’s social security number was inside, and a recent letter from the IRS says someone used it to get a job, but never paid taxes.

Now the federal government wants more than $8,000 for a $43,000 income he never earned.

Montesdeoca isn't the only one this has happened to. Other people have been contacting police in Charlotte saying they're victims of an unusual kind of identity theft that Detective Kevin Jones says begins with someone stealing your social security number.

“Go get a job somewhere under that person's information and fail to file taxes at the end of the year. Basically pocket all that money, fail to pay taxes at the end of the year, and then the victim the next year will get a notice from the IRS that (he or she) owes an amount of money,” Jones said.

For Montesdeoca, it's now happened two years in a row. Both times the letter from the IRS claimed he'd earned thousands of dollars at Food Lion, where he's never had a job.

“So I had to call the Food Lion headquarters to find out,” he said. “They were vague about who it was. They just confirmed that there was somebody working with them with that social and name.”

“They had your name?” Bradley asked.

“They had my name,” he said.

A spokesman for Food Lion told Eyewitness News, “We had no prior knowledge . . . but are willing to work with police to see if the employee is still working.”

Inside Charlotte's IRS office, Reggie McDaniel, who heads criminal investigations, is also interested in tracking that worker down.

“Our goal is to find them. Our goal is to stop the use of that social security number. Our goal is to investigate and see who's responsible,” he said.

IRS officials won't say how they tracks down offenders but there is a way you can find out quickly if someone has a job using your name and social security number.

Jones said you should start a seven-year fraud alert on your credit history and check it frequently.

“Jobs show up on that credit history, so if you see a job on there that you did not have, you might catch it quicker than the IRS finding out,” he said.

The IRS said it doesn't require identity theft victims to pay taxes on wages they didn't actually earn. If you suspect you may be a victim, contact the IRS.