[DrC]

“He had a job at Baskin Robbins two years before that SSN was ever issued.”

Thanks for these particulars. I knew he had some sort of teen job, but couldn’t remember timing. B-R is a major national corporation. I don’t picture them paying an employee under the table to avoid having to pay SS taxes. Which is to say that if Barry got a paycheck from them, the odds are overwhelming he would have need an SSN. But if he’d gotten a legitimate SSN 2 years earlier, then what’s the motivation for obtaining an illegal one 2 years later? That’s where I get hung up in these speculative theories that are flying about.

[Brown Deer]

But if he’d gotten a legitimate SSN 2 years earlier, then what’s the motivation for obtaining an illegal one 2 years later?

The number was issued in March 1977. There is no record of him actually using it until 1986, except on a selective service application dated July 30, 1980 written on a form created in 1990, which was not processed until 2008.