[LONG] Since the beginning of 2021 I have been dealing with identity fraud that has run rather deep and I'm at a loss of what to do. It started with a no name online bank calling to verify that I had applied for a personal loan of over $40K. After telling them I had not this bank informed me that someone had applied for a personal loan using my personal information. This has led to a long rabbit hole of discoveries of someone using my personal information for personal gain.
I initially had an identity fraud case with the local sheriff's office but they have essentially ghosted me and stopped replying to me months ago. So I have gone it alone for awhile. What I know is that this is all being done by a single individual out of a nearby city. They opened up a PO Box in that city and were running a fake LLC out of it. I was able to obtain a copy of the fake ID with their actual photo they used to impersonate me from that PO Box location as well as personal communications between them in which 4 names of people with access to that Box were stated. The phone numbers used for this are all local and match the area code of that city. Physical addresses used for this are also based out of this city.
Using mail that was being delivered to this PO Box along with obtaining my credit reports I found that they had successfully opened up checking and savings accounts with Bank of America. Bank of America was able to provide me time stamps of ATMs that were accessed across the city, all of which were local to that city. They also informed me whoever had done this was overdrawn almost $8000 in accounts under my name. I provided all of this information to my local sheriff's office, who again had initially begun to work with me but then simply stopped returning my calls/emails. I had tried talking with the police in the city that this is all occurring in, but they told me since I am not a local resident I have to go through my local police department (who again ghosted me).
Through all this I of course placed a fraud alert with 2 of the 3 credit bureaus. The 3rd, Experian, I was having a phenomenally difficult time getting ahold of. I could not do anything online nor could I speak to anyone over the phone despite trying every single option on their automated system. I was only able to find out that this person was attempting to open more credit cards and personal loans because one of my credit cards had a credit monitoring program which was tied to Experian, so I could see when something had changed. From there I contacted maybe a dozen or so companies over several months to explain it was all fraud.
This person even tried to get a car from the local physical Carvana dealership. I was able to get the VIN for the vehicle and everything and asked Carvana to provide any security footage to the local police. Instead, they denied any culpability and flat out refused to help and blocked me from contacting them.
Some months later yet another credit inquiry, this time telling me my social security number was tied to a new address on Experian. Somehow...I have no idea how, I was able to get through the security questions on the phone and speak to a human. After explaining the wild year I was having and my complete inability to talk to anyone at Experian for months, this representative did some deep searching and found that this person had actually created an Experian Premium membership using my personal information, paid for it with a credit card that was definitely not mine, changed my birthday (which is why I kept failing the security questions), changed my address, and of course now had access to my credit report and is probably how they knew so much of my personal information.
I asked Experian to provide the credit card and any other identifiable information to the local police. Shockingly (not shocking) and insultingly, they instead asked if I wanted to take over payments for the account that was falsely opened in my name. Basically did I want to become a premium member for their credit monitoring service! A service someone had been able to use to steal my information with and impersonate me for months! I repeated I just wanted them to send the information the the sheriff's office, so instead they transferred me for literal hours to different departments in circles until about the 8th person who I begged to not transfer me. They then told me they can't help me and that I need to write them a letter, provide a shit ton of IDs photocopied, and request that I help them, at which point they will make a decision of whether or not they want to after a few weeks.
TL;DR What do you do when you have photos, emails, addresses, phone numbers, time stamps of someone impersonating you, but everyone just throws their arms up and says sorry we can't help you?
Submitted July 23, 2021 at 09:42AM by rawrr_monster https://ift.tt/3hWwLgG
