Hey I need some help from my fellow nerds in a bet I made with my co-worker. I'm in the process of trying to create a fake person. I mean fake in the Shawshank Redemption sense (birth certificate, drivers license, bank account, etc.) Where do I even start?

And before you badger me about this - I know that there may be some legal ramifications, but this attempt is too badass to abandon. Please help me win this bet!!

The easiest way would be to go to some failed state or near-failed state in Africa. Granted, that means your person will be African, but that's probably the easiest way to create a fake person.

Disclaimer: I do not in any way support using the information listed above. This is merely information I learned from Sixty Minutes in my comparative politics class.

I would go to any High School, pick five girls and interview all of them individually.
One of them is bound to be totally fake.
At that point you will need to interview her parents and ask them how they created a fake person.

I'd start by working out the dependency graph of an identity. For certain legal reasons, though, that's all I'll say.

Legally change your name, first and last. For the rest of your life, you will constantly get twice as many credit card applications and other various junk mail, one piece for each name. I've seen this happen to several people.
My friend actually did something like this accidentally. He went by his middle name all of his life (it's a family tradition for some reason). When we were in middle school together the school accidentally had him listed twice in their computers. He also apparently got duplicates of his W2 forms a couple times.

I know this wasn't quite what you wanted, but it's the closest thing I could think of.

Thanks for the responses. From my research, I think that this sort of thing may have been possible in the 70s, but not today with increased security measures and the prevalence of computer-tracking. Good point about changing your name.

You may find Privacy Girl a good starter for 10.

Beyond that you're getting into distinctly dodgy territory. There are sites which will help you, but you'll have to find them yourself. I'm sure you know how to use a search engine.

As a general approach, any bureaucratic process will assume that a certain grade of documents is "genuine". Find out what documents you need, then find which processes provide those. Work that problem recursively until you come down to documents you can obtain. Then work back up the chain.

The problem with that approach is that it ends at "Birth Certificate." It's rather difficult to obtain a birth certificate for an unperson.

I can't comment on the US situation, but in the UK you can request a copy of a birth certificate if you know details such as the place & time of birth and/or the names of both parents. You can pick someone you know who died, and get their BC without any danger of crossing paths with the original.

Even if you can't (or don't want to) pull off that trick, a BC is a lot easier to fake than a passport.

I'm not recommending that anyone should do this, but if you are determined, then it can be done.

Imagine a woman gets pregnant, gives birth at home, and doesn't tell anyone in an official capacity. That child "doesn't exist". Because we can't have people without identities running around, there _must_ be some official way for that person to become real.

Borrow a young child for a few minutes (with permission from the parents, of course. I don't condone kidnapping). Make this claim. Acquire a social security number and an equivalent of a birth certificate. Give the child back.

You now have a fake person.