Terrance Summers quit recently after 17 years as a Baltimore corrections officer, fed up with bureaucracy and eager to start a new career.

But his enthusiasm wilted when he could not get work because prospective employers found several drug felonies on his record.

The fact that he hadn't committed the crimes did not solve his problem.

Summers discovered years too late that his cousin Earl Anthony Thomas had given his name in 1987 when arrested on felony drug charges.

Summers' name was - and is - on Thomas' criminal file, and is printed above his cousin's fingerprints.

"This can completely ruin a person's life," said Summers, 41, who lives in West Baltimore and spends most of his free time fighting to clear his name.

This type of identity fraud is so common in Baltimore that victims have recently been overwhelming the prosecutor's office. At least four times a week, a person with a similar problem walks into her office seeking help, said Kimberly Farrell, division chief for District Court. Two years ago, she saw about one a week.

Farrell said she has been so busy recently that she is seeking a grant to get an assistant to help her deal with the victims, who typically discover when applying for a job that someone has stolen their identity.

Criminal records are so difficult to alter that Maryland's highest court, the Court of Appeals, is trying to devise a way for people to correct mistakes.

Once a person's name is entered into a criminal justice computer as having been arrested or a defendant, it is not easy to get it purged. In the case of a felony conviction, a judge's order is required. And, once someone's name is attached to a set of fingerprints - as Summers' name is linked to his cousin's - it is very difficult to change.

The state's attorney's office is virtually powerless.

"There is no mechanism at the present time to allow us to expunge those prints," said Deputy State's Attorney Haven Kodek, who has verified Summers' account of identity fraud and is trying to help him clear his record. "There is no vehicle for us to correct it."

Summers said he can't understand why his problem is so difficult to fix. He believes it would help to hire a lawyer to guide him through the process, but says he has had trouble finding one to take his case. He said Legal Aid referred him to the public defender's office, which told him that it couldn't help.

Summers recently landed a job delivering pizza in Harford County, an hour's drive from his home. He doesn't want to deliver pizza in Baltimore, he said, because it is too dangerous.

"I can't live to the full potential of my abilities," Summers said. "There's nothing wrong with working at Domino's, but honestly, I worked in corrections for 17 years. This frustrates the heck out of me."

Summers, a 1979 graduate of Patterson High School, quit his job at the city jail in March. He has been looking for work since then, and says that potential employers offering promising jobs that include benefits are the ones who check his record.

"There's a section on the application that says, 'Have you ever been convicted of a crime?'" he said. "I mark 'no' and then they think I'm lying."

He said his problem has caused a financial crisis. His fiancee of a year asked him to move out of their house recently, he said, saying that she could not deal with his financial pressures. Summers now lives at the home of his ex-fiancee's mother, and helps fix up the house to earn his keep.

"I've drained my retirement money. I can't pay child support the way I want to," said Summers, who has a 10-year-old daughter, Erica. "I'm not used to this."

The man responsible for most of his woes died in 1994.

The cousins were friends while growing up in East Baltimore. But they lost touch after Summers went into the Marine Corps and Thomas joined the Army.

They reconnected briefly after leaving the service, and Summers co-signed a car loan for Thomas in 1986.

After Thomas was arrested on charges of manufacturing, possessing and dealing cocaine, Summers received a summons to appear in court. Confused and unaware of his cousin's arrest, Summers showed up at the hearing.

"We had to go to court for a motion of discovery to find out if I was Earl or Earl was me," said Summers, who was a corrections officer at the time. "We figured out who was who."

Angry with his cousin, Summers cut ties with him.

"Last time I talked to him I told him to stay the hell away," Summers said. "That was 1987."

Summers said he thought he had put the matter to rest. Like many victims of identity fraud, he didn't realize that he still had a problem until years later, when he began hunting for a job.

Background checks brought the problem to light. Farrell said the reason more people such as Summers are contacting her isn't necessarily that the number of victims is increasing but that more employers are checking applicants' records.

"The fact that computers are so much more accessible and connected means when employers are running security checks they are more likely to come across information they want explained," Farrell said.

"With all the events that have taken place in the world in the last year or more, employers are more interested in knowing the history of a person."

Richard Kurland, president of Owings Mills-based Employment Background Investigation, which checks criminal records for companies, said his business has increased significantly.

This year, he expects his investigators to run 222,700 names, about 50 percent more than last year. Kurland's company checked Summers' name for two potential employers and twice found the drug charges on his record.

Some people find that their names have been misused after police stop them for a traffic violation and discover that there is a warrant for their arrest.

There are times when an innocent person receives a summons to appear in court to answer for a criminal act.

When victims go to Farrell, she investigates their story and conducts a fingerprint search. If their account checks out, she writes them a letter stating that they have not been convicted of the charges on their record. That is all she has the power to do.

But for people such as Summers, that is not enough to convince prospective employers who discover criminal charges during background checks.

Pamela McComas is president and part owner of Pikesville-based Strategic Edge Solutions, a temporary agency that turned down Summers for a job operating a forklift because of his apparent record.

If a job applicant's criminal background check does not come back clean, McComas said, she will not hire the person. "If he does something terrible in the job, I'm responsible," she said.

Leonard A. Sipes Jr., a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, said problems such as Summers' could be avoided if all companies performing background investigations checked fingerprints to determine whether someone has committed a crime.

"There's no way of gaining a sense of certainty unless it is a fingerprint-based check," Sipes said. "You can have fraudulent documents claiming you're someone else."

The problem with that, however, is that private companies only have access to the fingerprint database under special circumstances, such as when running a check on a person seeking a job in day care.

Summers said he'd have no problem with an employer checking his fingerprints.

But for now, he said, a case of mistaken identity is preventing him from getting a better job.

"All they go by is what's on that record," he said. "As long as this is on my record, it disqualifies me."