My hubby has been through identity theft about 11/2 years ago. Someone managed to get my husbands info (dl #, social, address and even b-day) They went and opened credit cards with 5 different businesses. All in all it all totaled about $12,000. What made it worse is we had just bought a motorcyle the same weekend that all of this happened. We found out because we had recieved a walmart card in the mail. We thought it was just a new card on hubbys account. Went to try and activate it and he asked what the balance was and it was already maxed out! We talked to the fraud department and they told us to check our credit reports and put a fraud watch on everything. Our next tip off was that we recived a post card from the buckle say than you for buying such and such. We don't shop at the buckle. We called them and filed a police report for walmart and the buckle. In the course of 2 weeks we got 3 more bills from Gordon's jewlers, Old Navy and some phone stereo type place. It' sad that the cops that were coming out to our house knew what we were calling about and even remembered our names! There was nothing our local cops could do because all of this happend in Oklahoma City and they would forward our case. Never happened.
We didn't have to pay any of the money back and only lost money in lost wages due to hubby having to take so much time off of work to take care of everything. It's a long tedious process put listen to what the credit bureaus, cc company and even the police say. Put a "freeze" on your credit with the CBs and if any line of credit is opened later down the road you have to be notified within like 10 mins for approval. Myself I would cancel the card and reapply later. It might affect you credit in the form of too many inquiries. It affected my husbands by almost 100 points. But the plus is those have started dropping off and his score has dramatically improved. |