I’ve been the victim of identity theft. Nearly twenty five years ago before it was such a mess to clean up. I had traveled out of town with a couple friends to a weekend party that just kept giving. Immediately upon returning home I ordered all new cards and filed a report and figured that would be the end. I could not have been more wrong.
A few months later I received a certified letter that indicated a warrant for my arrest had been issued in a town several hundred miles away. The charges: felony theft. Movies, skies, food, other misc from a resort town had all been secured with my photo ID and credit card but never paid. I believe I still have a copy of that initial letter.
Fast forward a couple more threatening letters and I realized these guys did not believe my explanation and would not stop. It took a manual print-out of my time-sheet records signed by my boss and I believe notarized to put an end to the letters and the warrant. Closure, of sorts, came when my wallet with most of the cards was mailed back to me (to a previous city address then forwarded) several months later. Seemingly out of the blue.
A second episode occurred nearly two years ago. After a trip that included planes, trams, cabs and a large van I ended up with my wallet lifted. I absolutely knew who did it but no amount of my veiled threats or explanations of precisely what steps I was about to take led to so much as a squeak from him. He maintained complete silence as he stepped back into the van to continue on to his final destination. Heading home I immediately went through the requisite steps: close all accounts, set up fraud alert on credit reporting agencies and call all accounts to order replacement cards/accounts. Unbelievably nothing ever resulted; financially anyway.
A couple weeks ago Ames mentioned something about unusual activity on one of our e-mail accounts. I barely heard her and probably acknowledged it even less. My mistake. Typical. Fast forward a couple weeks and we’ve been hacked/spoofed/robbed. Pick the term of the day. Cash out the door to locations 1800 miles away. It’ll have an eventual happy ending~~it’s already heading in that direction. Yet not before plenty of memories resurfaced and a little panic set in.
One of the first steps taken (again) was pulling credit reports, one of the lessons of the story. It’s a good idea to put it on an annual list of things-to-do. It’s no cost, easy enough and only takes a few minutes. Be sure to select the official one, not one of the fee-based. FTC.GOV