Of fraud & credit score joy
Krikee
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Long story short, power service was ordered with my id and not paid for. Fast forward a bit and I have my police report number in hand and thought this would be rather simple. When they asked me for a notarized statement from the address that the account is at that I never lived at to begin with it dawned on me that this may not be so easy. I live in Texas. Advice? Horror stores? Cookies?
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Currently painting: Slowly [flickr]
- You get your police report done, in the report it should say something about the person using a false address etc.
- You get your free credit reports from the credit reporting companies by telling them that you're a victim of identity theft (you said it was done with your ID, it sounds like you don't know who did it, that's identity theft)
- You go down your credit report and you call every single place on that report that you don't recognize, tell them you've been a victim of identity theft and they will send you the paperwork you need to fill out for every single company
- You fill out all the paperwork for each company (usually you can't use one company's for another company, they all have their own forms) and you include a photocopy of your driver's license with the correct address and a copy of your police report. You photocopy 1 copy for your records so that you can re-send it if it doesn't reach them, then you take 1 copy over to the bank and get it notarized. (They basically stamp it saying you are who you are.)
- You send out all of those papers to all of the companies
- The company then contacts the credit reporting agency with a correction to your records
- The credit reporting agency sends you a new copy of your credit report with the new information. You can also request that the credit reporting agency put an identity theft lock on your name for up to 7(?) years, this usually requires that you snail mail them about it. What this does is make it so that any time someone tries to open any kind of service/account in your name, the credit reporting agency will call you to verify that it's what you want. They may also ask you personalized questions about your past history to verify that it is you. Note: This is another reason why it's critical to have the correct info about you on your account, they'll call the number they believe to be your primary phone number.
A couple more notes:
- Save a lot of time by making something like 10 photocopies of your credit report and driver's license to stick in a file together with your other paperwork. This means that if more crap shows up then you're prepared and have all your stuff together.
- Make photocopies of everything you send to the companies because you'll want it if they claim they didn't get it
- You cannot get a credit reporting agency to correct information on your say-so, their information comes directly from the vendors so you have to get the vendor to correct the info
- Because the credit reporting agencies get that info from the vendors it is absolutely critical that you root out everything in your credit report that you don't recognize, otherwise they'll keep telling people that you live at 123 Fake St. and no one will believe you when you say you don't! I cannot stress that enough!
Other than that, the process is a long and time consuming one because you'll have to weed out all instances of fake info, fake references, and fake accounts. Hope it helps!
Does your university know that they have an identify thief working for them yet?
Currently painting: Slowly [flickr]
It may only be one account now but if your information wasn't disposed of properly (example: my university used Social Security numbers as student IDs which is how my identity got stolen, they also would distribute the lists of them to all RAs, teachers, and staff) then you really should put an identity theft check on your credit reports or there may be more in the future.
Do you know what information they used to open the account?