A credit checking company says increasing numbers of people in New Zealand are using fake names for fraudulent purposes.
Veda Advantage says about a quarter of a million people on its database have one or more aliases. More than 50% have at some stage failed to pay their bills.
Managing director John Roberts says the number of fake names identified by the company over the past two years has grown by 30%.
He says the increase is a reflection of greater identity fraud in the community.
The company, which registers a thousand new aliases each month, says it has identified one person with 36 aliases.
It says there are 1973 individuals with more than five aliases and 127 people with more than 10 fake names.
