Identity theft

Any updates, sp?

 

As a kid, I used to think of lyrics of the "The Pina Colada Song" as "I like penis coladas, getting caught in the rain ..."

 

One has been removed from my credit reports. The other is in the process of being removed.
Just filling out forms and mailing them back to the banks.

 

And it happened again. Today I received a letter from American Express telling me I'm past due on my account with a balance of $97.

Never applied for an American Express card. Never received one. Never received a bill.

Edit: It gets even worse. I went on Credit Karma. My credit scores have both dropped dramatically. Equifax and Transunion, the only ones they show, were both "excellent" last week. Now Transunion is "Good" and Equifax is "Fair."
Both have a balance of $938 on American Express, with a $1,000 limit.

I have a feeling fixing this mess is going to end up becoming a full-time job. Is that usually the case?

 

Now I'm dealing with this. (The ID theft, not the misheard song lyrics.)

My mom's house is my home of record and I've now received two notices there to call to provide more information so A. Amazon and B. Ginny's in Wisconsin can complete my order. Amazon thinks I ordered a store card and Ginny wants a $374 down payment because I allegedly ordered so much kitchen stuff.

I talked to the Amazon bank and hopefully explained the situation and then pulled my credit history. There are two other inquiries, so I have to call them when they open, as I will Ginny as well even though I already emailed that company.

I've had a credit freeze on one of the three for years; I think that might have thwarted the Amazon card.

The query on my credit report had a phone number attached to it. I tried to call and got a busy signal.

What else are you supposed to do? I have no idea.

 

I think this may be a Bank of America version of the Wells Fargo employee scheme of simply opening accounts in peoples’ names to meet quotas, but maybe I’m missing something?

In October, I received something in the mail from Bank of America. I first thought it was one of those “you could have a real card that does x! Just call!” but something made me look more closely. Turns out it was a real debit card associated with an actual account. I called BofA and learned an account had been opened two days earlier, in my name, using my social security number, my address and a hotmail email address (they would not tell me the email address. I may have had a Hotmail account at some time. Beats me.) I spoke to the fraud department, asked that the account be closed and was told there would be no report ID number. The debit card was cancelled. I filed a report with the FTC, fraud alerts with credit bureaus and a stolen identity affidavit with the IRS. I’ve been checking my credit reports regularly. Nothing other than my two credits cards and mortgage are showing up. I got a checking account report and no other bank accounts have been opened. There have been no reports of attempts to open any other forms of credit, The Bank of America account, which always had a $0 balance was closed after a second call, a different fraud department rep and receiving a report number.

I can’t think of why someone would open an account in my name, using my address so that account information would be sent to me, other than as a kind of test to see whether I caught it and, if I didn’t, they would have obtained credit cards to be used until I did catch on. Or it was some BofA employee who needed to meet a new account quota. I did have a BofA account that I closed about 10 years ago. The only problem with this theory is that I’m pretty sure I closed it before I moved into this house.

Any ideas and how worried should I be? I haven’t done the seven year fraud alert yet and will get a PIN assigned from IRS that has to be used when filing my return for it to be accepted. Can’t think of anything else to do to protect myself.

 

I'd report it to the police. They probably can't do anything but if nothing else it gives you a police report to refer to in dealing with people. Sometimes they want one just to prove it happened and that you're serious.

 

Did they open it in your town, or somewhere else, like where you're from? That might help narrow down who did it.