your twin!
A twenty-three-year-old New Jersey man was surfing the Internet at the public library one day, when he happened across the site of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). There, he discovered a database of disclosure forms that public companies must file with the regulatory body. These forms contained the names of company officials and their Social Security numbers. Using the name of an official of a company who was thirty-four years older than he, he managed to gain approval for a $44,000 car loan from a major bank. He got a quote for car insurance from an online broker, then used a fraudulent MasterCard to pay for the policy. To actually buy the car, he needed proof he was the executive, so he picked up a fake birth certificate and W-2 form from a website that sold fake credentials. Then he went and bought a new Prelude. Because the executive had such excellent credit, the thief actually negotiated better financing from the car dealer than he had from the bank.
SHADOW OF YOURSELF
Once your identity has been stolen, everything doesn't just return to normal. You'll find yourself inconvenienced long after the culprit is caught. After she had been victimized, one woman put an alert with the credit agencies that if anyone applied for credit in her name, she had to be called and told about it. Months afterward, she was shopping for Christmas gifts and decided to buy her son a TV at an electronics store. Since you got a discount if you opened a credit account with the store, she tried to do so. The salesperson went to process it, only to come back and tell her, he was sorry, he couldn't extend her credit because there was nobody at her home when he called. Of course not, she said, I'm here talking to you. Well, he said, your credit bureau says I have to speak to you at your home before I can issue credit. So she had to drive home, take his call, then drive back.
A highly placed corporate executive had his identity stolen by a major drug dealer. These days, when the executive travels overseas, he has to carry an official letter with him that states that he is not the drug dealer. He'll always have to carry that letter with him. His life has been irrevocably changed.
I read about a woman writer who had her Social Security number stolen while she was living overseas. Using her name and number, the thief ordered telephone service in California, ran up thousands of dollars in bills, and then vanished without paying them. When the writer returned to the United States and applied to rent an apartment in New York, the landlord found she had a negative credit rating and wouldn't rent her the apartment. She had to take a sublet while she tried to get to the bottom of things.
She filed a police report. The cop who handled the case said he got an average of four complaints of identity theft a day. Not until she threatened to sue the collection agency charged with her case, did the agency relent and agree to correct her rating. It told her, however, that it might take as many as ninety days before her credit was restored at the national credit agencies. Four years later, the unpaid bills remained on her rating. She was still unable to rent an apartment.
An elderly woman went into the hospital for cancer surgery. While she was there, her daughter hired some cleaners because she wanted her mother to come home to a perfectly clean house. Not long afterward, the mother got a succession of calls from collection agencies. The cleaners had found enough personal information in the house to steal her identity. During the long ordeal of trying to straighten the mess out, the woman lost her house.
There was a man who worked as a salesman in a department store in California. One day he had his wallet stolen, which contained his driver's license, Social Security card, and military ID. Seven months after his wallet was stolen, he was called into the firm's main security office and told he had been caught shoplifting at one of the chain's other stores. He had done no such thing. In fact, he had been working in his usual store at the time. He even produced a letter from his boss confirming that. Still, he was fired. The man who had stolen his wallet had assumed his identity and