Identity Theft

[Lowrange2]

My dad was at work at his business where he is the owner, operater, and garbage boy when he recieved a call from Dell financial asking him when he was going to make his first payment. He quickly responded with "What payment?"

Needless to say 'he' had just bought a $4,000 computer thru an account opened in his name and had it shipped to somewhere in Miami. After fileing fraud papers with Dell he got his credit report and found that over 25 attempts had been made to open different accounts using his name, DOB, SS#, and mother maiden name. We have no idea how they got this info. He has an outstanding bill of $265 with AT&T in miami as well as he owes 6k to a bank in Miami. All places politly complied and didn't hold him responsible for the debts at all. What I want to know is how often does this really happen! Have any of you guys had this happen. and could this person really be dumb enough to use his actual address. The same address and phone # was used on all of the applications. I wonder if we'll be able to catch this person...

In the words of 5-90 "Discuss" :) I like it I had to use it!

[Darky]

I had someone open a Target card account in my name. They only spent $260, but I didn't have to pay any of it. I hadn't even been in a Target for 5 yrs before that. I think the guy learned a quick lesson, beware of who's identity you steal. Ain't no use stealin' a po' black man's identity when he ain't got no credit anyways... :D

[SBrad001]

Not nearly to the level that it happened to your father, but it did happen to my wife and I five years ago.

My wife left our check book in our car and it(the car) was stolen. We closed the account but the f**ks used the the checks for all kinds of things and really f'ed up our credit for awhile.

[XJ&CHZ4ME]

It happened to my wife and I a few years back. It's a long story, but here is the shortened version of it....I work for the U.S. Government (let the bashing begin!!) and our state office had hired an intern to work in human resources for the summer. Well, that intern was not required to go through any security background checks like the rest of the staff, and boy did the agency pay for that dumb b*tch. This intern was a no good whore who was banging some basketball players from the University. Well, one of the b-ball players was an import (lack of better word) here on an athletic scholorship and he talked her into getting him the list of all the employees personal info. She simply made copies of some the employees (and their spouses) information and gained alot of the pertinant info from the insurance paperwork on the employees, and bam!, she had this info to this jerk and he had his brother sell the information. Luckily when the person/people decided to use my family info, they just got a couple of cell phones and ran up some bills there. We pleaded our case to the cell company and they dropped the bill, but we had to file a poilice report locally for identy theft and had to send a copy of that report to the phone company. We then had a credit alert put on our credit rankings so when we went to get a loan they had "secret" questions that they would ask us before a loan could be made to our SS #'s. It was a pain in the ass to go through, but not as sever as your fathers dealings. I hope he gets everything taken care of.

[1985xjlaredo]

This hapens alot! I know 3 people who have had there credit ruined. One was about 12 years ago and he lost almost everything he had fighting it. In the end he would have been better off to pay the $30,000 or so to whom ever than he would have been to fight it.

[RTicUL8]

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft//index.html

[Lowrange2]

Well my Dad came out well. He caught it early and his credit wasn't touched but I could imagine how much worse it can be.

[oo7ravisXJ]

I don't see how the credit unions know what to believe, couldn't somebody buy a bunch of stuff, ruin their own credit, then say they were victims of identity theft?

[Lowrange2]

You should conduct an expirement and let us all know! :) My hypothesis is that it is fraud and you would end up in jail with bad credit!

[oo7ravisXJ]

haha, i might end up rich though!!

:rolleyes:

[Lowrange2]

Well if you do please don't use my ID and you have to split the profits with me 30/70 - for giving you the idea!

[Vince]

It happened to me in 2004. Police caught the crooks, a gang operating out of South Africa. I don't know what punishment they got, but I ended up with a damaged credit file for 6-years. I'm extremely careful about where my personal data is used now and I cross-cut shred everything that has my name or address printed on it.

I recently got a letter from the British equivalent of the IRS informing me that they lost a computer disk containing all of my personal data and bank account details - marvellous! Here we go again!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7103566.stm