To clear your criminal record after identity theft, you build an evidence file proving the arrest wasn’t yours, get a court order declaring you factually innocent, and then carry that order to the FBI, the DMV, and every background check company still reporting the record. No agency does this for you, and a state court order does not automatically propagate through federal databases or private screening companies. Plan on months of work and keep certified copies of everything.
Build the Evidence File First
Nothing moves until you have documentation. Two reports anchor the file.
File at IdentityTheft.gov, the federal government’s central portal for identity theft victims. That generates an FTC Identity Theft Affidavit. Take the affidavit, a government-issued photo ID, proof of your address, and any evidence you have to the police department in the jurisdiction where the crime occurred, and file a formal police report. The FTC affidavit plus the police report together form what federal law calls an Identity Theft Report, which unlocks specific rights, including the ability to block fraudulent information from your consumer reports.
While you are at the station, ask the department to run your name through local, state, and federal databases for outstanding warrants or convictions you don’t know about, and request copies of any arrest records tied to your name. You need the full scope of the damage before you start correcting it.
Fingerprints and Photographs
Courts and agencies compare your physical identity against whatever the impostor left during booking. Get a professional ten-print set taken at a law enforcement facility on the standard FD-258 fingerprint card, with all ten fingers rolled from nail to nail and plain impressions of each hand. The service generally runs $20 to $50. Have several recent high-quality photographs taken as well.
Then request the booking photo from the arresting agency. Your fingerprints, your photos, and the impostor’s booking materials side by side are what make the mismatch obvious to a judge.
Get a Court Order of Factual Innocence
The core legal remedy is a court order establishing that you are not the person arrested. States call it different things: a finding of factual innocence, an expungement, or a petition to seal and destroy arrest records for identity theft victims. The goal is the same regardless of the label — a signed order that formally separates your identity from the criminal record.
Preparing the Petition
You need specific data points so the court can locate the right records: the exact date of the alleged offense, the location of the arrest, the booking number, and any aliases the impostor used. Court clerks have the forms, and many courts post them online. Fill in the petition carefully, keeping your identifying information distinct from the details tied to the impostor’s arrest, and cross-check every entry against your police report. A single transposed digit in a booking number can set you back weeks.
Filing and the Hearing
File with the clerk of the court in the jurisdiction where the arrest took place, and serve copies on the prosecutor’s office and the arresting agency. Filing fees are generally modest, and some jurisdictions waive them for identity theft victims.
At the hearing, bring your fingerprint card, your photographs, the booking photo, the police report, and your FTC Identity Theft Report. The judge compares the materials to decide whether there is any reasonable basis to believe you committed the offense. When the evidence is clear, the court issues a formal order declaring you factually innocent and directs that the arrest record be sealed or destroyed.
Get multiple certified copies of that order. You will send them to the FBI, the DMV, background check companies, and employers. Keep the originals somewhere safe indefinitely.
Push the Order Through the FBI
A state court order does not automatically reach the FBI’s criminal history records. The FBI does not directly accept state court orders to expunge non-federal arrest data. The correction has to flow through the State Identification Bureau in the state where the offense occurred. The state bureau receives your court order and then transmits the deletion to the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division. Contact information for each state’s bureau is on the FBI’s website.
If your FBI Identity History Summary still contains inaccurate information after the state bureau acts, challenge it directly with the FBI. Submit a written request identifying the inaccurate entries and attach copies of your court order, police report, and other supporting documents. The FBI processes challenges in the order received, with an average response time of about 45 days. There is no fee.
Federal arrest data is a separate track. Those records are removed only at the request of the submitting federal agency or on receipt of a federal court order. If the impostor committed a federal offense in your name, you will be working with the federal agency involved rather than a state court.
Clear Your Driving Record
When someone gets a citation, causes an accident, or obtains a fraudulent license in your name, the violations land on your driving record. That translates into points, suspensions, or insurance premium spikes.
Take your court order of factual innocence to the DMV’s fraud division or mandatory actions unit along with your police report and FTC Identity Theft Report. The fraud division has authority to review the court’s findings and delete the incorrect entries. Keep stamped copies of everything you submit.
Interstate issues come up often. Most states participate in the Driver License Compact, which shares traffic offense data across state lines. If the impostor picked up citations in a state other than where you are licensed, your home state may have already imported them. Contact the DMV in both the state where the citation was issued and your home state to make sure the fraudulent entries are removed from both.
Dispute Records With Background Check Companies
Even after courts and government agencies clear your name, private background check companies may still be selling reports that show the impostor’s arrest under your identity. This is where the real damage usually surfaces: denied jobs, rejected rental applications, revoked professional licenses.
Your Rights Under the FCRA
The Fair Credit Reporting Act gives you two tools. Under 15 U.S.C. § 1681i, you can dispute inaccurate information in your file. When you notify a consumer reporting agency, it must conduct a free reinvestigation and either correct or delete the disputed item within 30 days. If the agency cannot verify the information, it has to be removed.
More directly useful for identity theft victims, 15 U.S.C. § 1681c-2 lets you block fraudulent information from your report entirely. To trigger a block, send the agency proof of your identity, a copy of your Identity Theft Report, identification of the specific fraudulent entries, and a statement that the information does not relate to any transaction you made. The agency must block the information within four business days of receiving your request.
Who to Contact
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau publishes a list of consumer reporting companies organized by market, including employment screening and tenant screening. The three largest nationwide agencies are Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. Beyond those, dozens of specialty companies focus specifically on criminal background checks for employers and landlords. Send your court order, police report, and dispute letter to every company whose report has been pulled on you or that operates in a market where you have been affected.
When a Background Check Costs You a Job
If an employer decides not to hire you based on a background check, federal law requires them to give you a copy of the report and a summary of your rights before the decision is final. That pre-adverse action notice is your window to dispute the record. An employer who skips it has violated the FCRA, which can give you a separate claim.
If the EEOC’s guidance on criminal records in hiring applies to your situation, the agency recommends an individualized assessment that includes notice and a chance to show the record is inaccurate or doesn’t belong to you. Hand the employer your court order, police report, and FTC Identity Theft Report. Most will proceed with the hire once they see the documentation.
Protect Yourself While the Record Is Being Cleared
Clearing takes months. During that time you are still exposed to the same warrants and background check failures that alerted you to the problem.
Identity Theft Passports and Letters of Clearance
Some states run identity theft passport programs, usually through the state attorney general’s office. The passport is a document you can carry and present to law enforcement during a traffic stop or other encounter to show you are a known victim and that warrants in your name may belong to the impostor. Not every state offers this, so check with your attorney general’s office. Even in states without a formal program, ask the investigating department for a letter of clearance once your innocence has been established, and carry it until every record is corrected.
Ongoing Monitoring
Run your own background check every six to twelve months to catch records that resurface or new fraudulent entries. You can request your FBI Identity History Summary directly from the CJIS Division by submitting your fingerprints. Place a fraud alert or credit freeze with the major credit bureaus to reduce the chance the impostor recycles your identity. Keep certified copies of your court order accessible for years; employers, landlords, and licensing boards may surface old records long after you thought the issue was resolved, and producing the order on short notice is the fastest way to end the problem.