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Question: You’d be surprised, particularly if you lie. When my SSN was stolen and used, the person who stole it ran up almost $40,000 in credit card debts. At the time my annual income was less than $10,000 per year and had never been higher than that and I’d only been working for a few years, although I had perfect credit.

How did you fix it? Is the defaults still on your credit report! That is a big scare of mine. My wife is in Prison and I worry some of those crooks will use my ssn to commit such fraud.

Answer: Get your credit report frequently. This was 6 years ago and I still get my credit report every six months. If I was concerned it might still be happening, I would be getting it every three months. I never got my credit report before, and I was completely shocked when I started getting phone calls from collection agencies. This had been going on for several years before I found out. The cost of a credit report is minimal and it’s worth it.

Once you notice a problem, contact the company. As soon as possible. Don’t bother with the person who answers the phone. Tell them you want the fraud department. Once you have the fraud department, tell them that someone fraudulently took a credit card in your name. They will send you a form to fill out. You’ll have to swear out an affidavit that the card isn’t yours, and if possible, try to prove it. You might have to also file forms with the police, or meet with a police officer to give your account. It helps if the bill is being sent to another address, or was applied for in another state, or the signature looks nothing like yours. You’ll probably have to have the affidavit notarized. Don’t trust ANYTHING that is done over the phone, phone conversations are useless in court. Send copies of everything by mail, and insist that you get confirmation of everything in writing. You might even send things certified mail, although I couldn’t afford to do that at the time. I just kept copies. It’s possible you might have to go to court, but I never did. After I filed the affidavits and kicked and screamed some more, the credit cards were eventually taken off my records as fraudulent.

By the way, I was never told any of this by the credit card companies. I bungled and fumbled my way through, believing what they told me, until I realized they were just stringing me along. They’d tell me they’d help me, but then they wouldn’t. Or they’d blame me and accuse me of stealing the money. I realized I had to get tough and stop trusting the credit card companies to help me. Silly me, I thought that because I had always paid my bills and used money responsibly, that when I was victimized the credit card companies would be on my side. Definitely not, they treated me like I was the “bad guy” the whole time.

In the end, the only credit card that I couldn’t get off my report was a card that was originally mine. I had cancelled it and cut up the card, and this person (a relative) found the account number, called up the bank and reactivated the card. It was nearly impossible to prove that I didn’t use it, since it was originally my card, and the credit card company dug in their heels and refused to believe me. They told me I had to get a lawyer and go to court, which I couldn’t afford. By this point I was so tired (it took over two years, stacks of letters and probably hundreds of phone calls to get all this straightened out) that I just gave up. The balance was low and I just paid it off, and took the hit on my credit report. A pretty bad hit, because it had been in default for almost a year, and the court had been sending notices to the fake address telling me that I was being taken to court. I had a few bad moments when I moved to a new city and was turned down for apartments because of my “bad credit”. In another two years it will be off my credit report completely (hooray!). But you have to continue to be vigilant. I had some cards that came off my credit report, and then showed up again in a few months, in one case even a couple of years later.

There are more extreme measures, you can change your SSN (but this is difficult) and you can freeze your credit so no one can get a credit card in your name without special procedures. But this means you won’t get special offers or special credit card deals. I haven’t done this, since the person who did this to me is now in jail (for something else), but if it’s an ongoing threat you might consider it. I now shred everything and protect my SSN very carefully.

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