Rosa Vargas thought she was happily married — she just didn’t know she was “married” to four guys.
The 37-year-old Queens mom has been the victim of an identity-theft nightmare, in which a parade of mysterious creeps arranged fake marriages by using her birth certificate which she lost some 16 years ago.
Vargas had no idea what was going on — until she tried to get married in 2004 and was heartbroken to find her application for a license rejected by the City Clerk’s Office.
She was turned down after records showed she was already been “married” twice in 1996, once to a man from Mexico and once to a man from Ecuador.
“I was very shocked and distraught [being rejected] because it was three weeks before I was supposed to get married,” Vargas told The Post.
It wasn’t clear why the men got married with women using her identity, but often such ID theft involves immigration scams.
After the discovery, Vargas decided to get a license from another jurisdiction, Long Island. On the advice of the family priest and a lawyer, Vargas got a license from another jurisdiction.
She and fiancé Angel Poggi said their “I do’s” and prepared to live happily ever after.
Then one of her other “husbands” turned up.
Out of the blue in 2009, the man from Ecuador slapped her with divorce papers.
“I was really astounded,” Vargas recalled. “Who is this person? It was very disturbing since I’ve never been married to anyone but my husband.”
When she refused to sign those documents and hired a lawyer, the Ecuadorean man showed up at her mother-in-law’s house.
“Luckily, my mother-in-law had a picture of our wedding day,” Vargas explained. “She said, ‘Is this the person you were married to?’ He said, ‘No.’ ”
Vargas decided to go back and clear her name with the City Clerk’s Office.
On Jan. 25, Administrative Law Judge Joan Salzman ruled that Vargas had indeed been the victim of fraud and nullified the two 1996 marriages.
The fakery wasn’t tough to root out. The bogus 1996 marriage application said Vargas’ mother was born in Venezuela; she is a native of Puerto Rico.
Unfortunately, her troubles aren’t over. Vargas also discovered another fake marriage in her name, on Long Island, and is fighting to erase it.