I had someone open a bunch of accounts in my name. Only found out about it when I applied for credit and was denied. Took me a while to get it all sorted out, but the retail companies and credit reporting agencies were very responsive.
Had my identity stolen as a child, didn't find out about it until I was 18 and applying for college loans.
Actual conversation I had with someone at one of the credit agencies:
"Okay but see, at the time that 45k loan was taken out in my name, I was twelve years old. Are you telling me that a bank gave a loan to a twelve year old child? I mean I know just about anyone could get a mortgage in 2007/2008 but come on, a twelve year old had a 45k line of credit?"
@Collin1000 my buddy is a "jr." and his fathers mortgage showed up on his credit, he has a similar conversation with the person trying to deny his auto loan. He had that happen a lot, fortunately his wasn't fraud, it was just stupid people.
@Collin1000 I've heard of that tactic for identity theft. A 12-year-old isn't going to do anything with credit for a few years, so it stands a better chance of going undetected for a while.
@PocketBrain Yep, that appears to be the method they used. Once someone gets around to finding out about it, the crime is long done and the traces of whoever did it are long gone. Well executed.
I voted no, but then I remembered back in the day I had a blockbuster account opened in my name, fortunately they didn't use my SSN. I also happened to frequent that particular blockbuster with a friend of mine and we were buddy buddy with all the girls that worked there, so they removed the account since they knew me... I found out because I received some sort of notice in the mail, thankfully they had done it where I knew the manager, so I lucked out not having to fight crazy charges.
After closing an account with T-Mobile, I found out several years later that someone had kept the account open and paid cash for the bills for years. Then they stopped paying and it became my problem. They were in Florida and I'm in California but I still had to prove that it wasn't me. I also had my credit report merged with someone else that had a similar name. How is it even possible for one person to have 2 social security numbers? Now I pay for credit monitoring, clearing that stuff up is a pain in the butt.
More than 20 years ago, long before it was commonplace to treat the victims of identity theft as criminals, NY State gave away info about many many employees. I was one. The miscreant(s) changed the address on one of my credit cards and requested checks, which they used to get $5500 from that account. Ended up with a seven year warning to not issue credit on my report and no other real impact.
Since then, there was a problem maybe 10 years ago when my girlfriend bought gas (never, ever give your credit card to the guy who pumps your gas) and most recently (last summer) when I made the mistake of shopping at Home Depot. All in all, not much of a problem at all, other than the hassle of having to change account numbers.
A pastor In So Cal and I share the same exact name. and he is moderately famous in Christianity, so I got approved for a bunch of stuff. one day I found out I got a ticket I didn't know about. at the end of the day the pastor and I met up to discuss everything. it was a decent good day and he laughed about it all with me. I know not exciting or painful but really cool to learn that some one shares our name and lives not too far away
Someone got a hold of my debit card info a few years back, and proceeded to make a series of mediocre purchases online. Like, I remember one of 'em was for some shitty little piece of software for converting video formats, like the type of thing you can find for free with little to no effort. But instead they decided spending twenty of my dollars on it was a better idea. If you guys had been around back then I bet they would have cleaned you out of speaker docks.
@nogoodwithnames I used to work for a tech company, we had a high ratio of stolen credit cards used on digital goods. The credit card processing company told us that fraudsters used digital goods to test if the cards were still active/clean before they went to make bigger ticket purchases or use them in person when police could be called. Apparently it is also common for fraudsters to make donations to charities using stolen credit cards as well for this same purpose.
@Collin1000 The financial institution where I work had to replace 42000 cards because of this one. Tokens (read that as Apple Pay) are the smart way to go. Your card number is never used only a 1 time use token is sent.
Had a girl in pajamas come to my apartment door crying saying that she had a fight with her boyfriend and needed to call someone. I handed her my cordless land line (early 2000's) and gave her some privacy while she called from the breezeway. Tuned out she was activating one of my credit cards she got a hold of from the mail. I got the bill a month later. She spent like 500 on gas, clothes, and Jack in the Box.
@toddnet I had my next door neighbor (apartment) give a sob story about her phone, let her use mine, she was on for about an hour to several places in Asia and I had hundreds of dollars on my bill. I had to pay it since I had let her use my phone. Before the phone bill came in she bought an antique piece of furniture from me using a check she had stolen (her mom was a real estate agent, she'd use the lockbox to get into houses calling saying she was showing the house, then pull a few checks from way down in the check pile and use them. She then skipped town but was caught many states away when she went to get her mercedes serviced.
I used a credit card online to buy a gift card for my nephew at Toys 'r Us. When I got my bill there were 4 extra small charges I didn't recognize. Fortunately there were 800 phone numbers on the charges so I was able to call, only to find out they were memberships to two "adult" video clubs and the first videos. I had to agree to a statement that they weren't my charges in order to get them removed. No, really, the weren't mine. Seriously.
@heartny I've been hit on my credit card a few times after online purchases, but my credit card company detected the problem each time, called me about it and cancelled the card and issued a new one that I received the next day. I never had to pay a cent. But I've made it a habit to only purchase online with a card that has a low limit of $500 just to avoid larger headaches. The last time it was stolen someone tried to purchase over $3k with it. DENIED!!! :-)
Some guy in Georgia tried to file taxes in my name to get a refund, but the joke's on him because I was flipping 16 and was already claimed as a dependent and also I never actually contributed to society that year.
One of my buddies had his CC info stolen, and while he was resolving it with the card company, they were telling him the charges/asking him what was/wasn't his. The person who stole the card somehow made like a several-hundred dollar purchase at Dominos Pizza. We had a good laugh trying to figure out how that's even possible…
@brhfl Probably had a buddy who worked there and ran the card and took an equivalent amount of cash. Yes, I know that's stupid. But a lot of people who steal credit card numbers are stupid.
@brhfl - POS niece did this to my MIL. She first stole 75 YO grandmothers credit card information during a visit, then – while she was working at the take-out window at TacoBell – proceeded to hit up her account for several $50.00 withdrawals every day until she was caught by the management there. MIL refused to press charges, so her grandaughter managed to wipe out all her retirement savings for drugs.
Someone got my credit card number and took two cash advances totaling $13k. The credit card company was very good about immediately taking them off my account.
Had someone call in once to report their card lost/stolen. While the card was being shutdown my rep noticed a charge just coming in. He looked up the merchant (a Best Buy) and called the store. The manager was able to get the woman who had the stolen card. The idiot was still in the store trying to spend a couple more thousand. Unfortunately people getting caught doesn't happen often enough. Usually the financial institution eats the loss. Fraud loss is actually a budgeted item for most large banks.
I've had my credit cards fraudulently used several times. The worst is when somebody social engineered the DMV to steal my personalized license plate.
I have a personalized license plate that I have had for maybe 35 years, but didn't have on a vehicle for a while. Every year I'd go in to the DMV to pay the retention fee: the first time it took the poor clerk an hour to figure out how to do it. That clerk ended up giving me the receipt for the fee with a stamped date on it. Every year after that I'd walk the clerk through the process (never got the same clerk twice), and got the receipt. Went in one year, and the clerk notified me that the plate was now on a vehicle in SoCal. I showed her all my receipts, and the original plates. She immediately realized that something was wrong; probably the SoCal person persuaded a clerk in the SoCal office to hand it out. To her credit my clerk followed up on it even after she had been taken off the counter duty and was in the back office; it took six months. First they searched their records to see if a letter had ever been sent to me asking if I still wanted the plate; came up negative (duh!). Then they notified the other person that they needed to come in to give up the plates. They did not do so, so eventually my clerk rescinded the other plates and officially gave ownership of the license back to me. The other person would not be able to renew his registration until he came in and got different plates; I have no idea if they did.
The last thing my clerk told me was to put the plates on a vehicle to prevent it from happening again, and I did so.
@meow57 You can safely send all the details to me. Remember to include your credit card info and your mothers maiden name! Oh and why don't you just share it here?
Yes, and took over a year to clear it up. An employee of my insurance agent was the culprit. Felt better knowing that I didn't do something stupid to expose myself, but the whole ordeal was a major PITA. Thankfully the rat bastard is in jail now.
I had a rental car agency employee steal my card numbers. The dumb ass used it to pay his phone bill. But he also opened a western union account in my name and sent himself money in his real name. Then he used it at Lowe's for close to $800. My credit card company shut it down within 18 hours, before I even knew there was a problem. The police refused to take a report because I couldn't prove where the original crime took place (WTF? - I KNEW where it had to take place because it was the only place where my card had been out of my sight in years and I wasn't using it much because I was broke) So I spent 2 days on the phone, got this shit's name from Western Union (they have a police line and we talked long enough the lady either felt sorry for me or forgot I wasn't police) and phone number from them. I gave that to the police and they still didn't do anything. It wasn't until the credit card company wanted a police report number that they did anything (eg let me file a report).
TWO YEARS later something possessed me to google the guy. Turns out he was, just two weeks earlier, locked up for two accounts of credit card fraud. So I called my local police. They still didn't want to go after him; said they wouldn't be able to bring his past history into it, he'd be spiffed up for the trial and get off. I pushed and pushed. Gave them all the evidence again, reminded them that they didn't even need to go look for the guy as he was in jail. So two months after that they finally had me sign a report (called them weekly and then twice weekly). Now 7 months later I need to call the police to find out what happened. Thanks for the reminder LOL.
Nope crime does not happen in my town. No siree it does not. We don't take reports about stuff being stolen out of garages either since the garage door was not shut tight. Never mind that we had a crime spree with things being taken off porches, out of open garages, out of backyards… Nope not a crime to steal if the owner does not lock it up I guess. I then asked if it was OK for me to roam the neighborhood and take things I wanted from others that was out in the open or in unlocked sheds and garages, trespassing on their property to do so - perhaps their car out of the driveway is now OK given the logical conclusion to their reasoning? Geesh.
Our town is proud of their very low crime rate. Yup for all the run down apartment complexes we have, we. do. not. have. crime. in. this. city. and especially not in our neighborhood ( which abuts about 1000 units of nearly shut down due to the sheer volume of code violations apartments)...
Yeah, one time I stole this dude's identity and it turned out he had worse financial problems than me. The interest rates on the credit cards I got in his name were outrageous. 24%! I thought I was the criminal. In this case, I was definitely a victim of identity theft.
More than once. One that was too stupid to even believe. I had gotten a computer from Dell and had a Dell account. Dell called me wanting to know if I'd ordered something (I hadn't) and they cancelled the order. I went into my account and there was a shipping address to the guy (in St Louis MO) who had purchased it.
The other one was directly from a bank account back in 2008. Brian had borrowed 25K from his mom to buy a tractor (the little red one in that Mahindra ad). He was working on getting a better deal on it, you know, had the money, then started the negotiating. So, the money was just sitting in the account. It wasn't a very active account for us, just a seperate one I was using for cat related stuff. It also had a $2500 overdraft with it. Every month I check all of our accounts, just to see how they're doing. I checked this one and it had $96.00 in it. WTF? And the overdraft was cleaned out.
Fortunately, this account has copies of all the withdrawal slips and deposit slips available online. I printed them all out. There were six withdrawal slips, all signed by me. Except it wasn't my signature and that wasn't how I spelled my name. And they all happened in South Dakota and Minnesota. And you know how withdrawals over a certain amount need to be signed by a supervisor? They weren't. (To this day I believe one of the thieves was on the inside - here's an account with lots of money and very little activity, they won't notice it right away.) The bank was certain it was one of us who did this. "Are you sure your husband didn't do this?" Yeah, he was here in the morning, here at five in the afternoon. I'm pretty certain he didn't hop on a jet back to the midwest to take his own money".
One of the slips was transferring money to some sort of state child account (support maybe?). It took months, but we finally got the money back into our account. All of the footwork was done by me over the internet. The phone calls, investigating the withdrawal slips. The bank was pretty useless, except for the sweet clerk at one of the banks at the grocery store. She was the one who gave me the information that got me started, she was very helpful. But the bank manager where we had to fill out the paperwork was a moron. He had me fill out one report for all six transactions, when it should have been one report per transaction. It took a month before we found this out and I had to redo.
The following year, I got a call from the FBI asking me for information and I faxed everything I had over to them. They'd found the people and they were up in the Los Angeles area at that point.
Last month I tried to set up external transfers for one of our accounts and was told there was a hold on one of the accounts. I called and it wasn't a hold, but an alert for the old account. They took it off.
@Kidsandliz I agree. We have a Ranger and once upon a time it had a shell on it. Brian had a non-working compressor in the back, strapped down, because he was planning on taking it in to be repaired. One night, we heard a loud crash outside and looked out the window (bedroom looks out to the street) and there were some dirtbags at the back of the truck. Brian runs out in his underwear and the dirtbags jumped back into their little dirtbag truck and drove off. They'd broken the glass window on the back of the shell. It was an older model shell and they no longer made them so replacing the glass would have cost more than a new shell. My truck no longer has a shell.
The dirtbags left behind a box cutter (they were using it to slice the straps that kept the compressor from moving). I called the police to let them know I had evidence. The guy was nice enough when he told me "this isn't like television, looks like you guys have a new box cutter". Gee, thanks.
And don't forget my niece who's car was broken into when she was hiking. She was in the process of moving so she had a lot of her things in it and the police didn't do squat. She's the one who kept on top of it (checking Craigslist on an hourly basis) and ended up getting the people caught who did it. They had lots of stolen goods at their home.
@Duggle Maybe they are trying to indirectly gauge interest for an ianti-dentify theft daily deal. Heck if it woks as well as the servers on fuku night they might make a mint LOL
My debit card was skimmed at a gas station in Surprise, AZ during Spring training. $500.00 was withdrawn from a bank in California using my pin. It was a debit card from a federal credit union. This was in 2010, before you had to put in your zip code when using a card at the pump. I filed a police report at the Surprise police, and took that report to the credit union. There were 33 victims according to the bank. Hmmm.
And, another year, a box of checks was stolen from the mailbox, the rural route kind. Classless, white drug-head, 5kids under the age of 7, 33 year old woman, started signing my name to checks and trying to cash them at local check cashing stores. One of those stores, called the phone number on the check and asked me if I bought a $1000.00 couch from this lady. I said call the police my checks have been stolen. I didn't even know the checks had been sent, but realized they had been stolen. Police arrested her, I pressed charges, she got incarcerated. I didn't have any money stolen, but I had to close that account, and then....open a new one, which messed up the timing on my sons, baseball camp registration fees!!!
My husband's identity was stolen and false income tax returns were filed in his name to claim bogus refunds. Took me months of sending real documented proof of the actual figures to get it straightened out. I'm never quite sure it is completely settled, and we got audited as a result of the bastards who used the address of an empty lot in Miami to file returns in our name. We are now accepted into the official IRS stolen identity program and now we need to have a special private PIN to conduct any business with the IRS or to file returns. What a stressful pain in the arse that was and continues to be. A thought... is this leading up to Meh offering a deal to sign up with one of those identity and credit protection programs like Lifelock?
@Kidsandliz haha actually gridlock is a pretty good description of the tortuous process I had to go through with the IRS. But I have no opinion about Lifelock because I don't use it, even after all these problems. But I do tend to pay cash for a lot more things because I'm more wary. I pay cash at the gas pump and at Target and other chains using those funky old POS systems that have been hacked a few times.
Had someone open a Verizon Wireless account in my name last year; only found out because I started getting bills for it. Oddly, no usage whatsoever (data, text, or voice), so I guess they opened the account to get a free phone to try and sell, or swap ESNs on.
Verizon's still sending me bills for the cost of the phone, and sent it to collections once (who sent it back to Verizon once I sent them a copy of the police report), despite their fraud department saying the account's been closed and written off as fraud.
They also applied for a couple of credit cards, but my credit is bad enough that I can only get store cards. Whoever did it had my DOB, SSN, and obviously my home address. The account was opened the day after I quit my last job, and their fraud department told me the account was opened at a Target just up the street from there. Funny coincidence, ain't it?
A few months ago I logged into my Pinterest (don't judge, there are a ton of awesome recipes on there, that's also the only thing I use it for) and surprisingly found about 20 random high-end women's shoes pinned by me.
I immediately texted my girlfriend with screenshots telling her I found her funny joke only to have her swear she didn't do it.
Somehow my Pinterest account was compromised and I guess whoever did it really likes shoes. I reset my password after that and I still get emails from someone trying to get in every few weeks.
@Thumperchick right!? I don't understand what they were after. It's not connected to any of my other accounts and has no other personal or payment information besides my email address.
@JonT maybe they confused your login with theirs? I have a coworker who's login to our software ois very close to a customers login name....she routinely locks him out by typing in the wrong passwords multiple times
@tightwad very very unlikely, especially since they actually DID get in somehow...so unless they have a really similar email address and the same password as me...something else weird happened.
Over a year ago someone withdrew a ton of money from my accounts, then used it and my name to start an e-commerce site directly competing with the one I had just sold to a large online retailer. There are rumors he (she?) even named a giant wall decal of a rodent after me. All of this has caused me great emotional turmoil, but thankfully my finances are back in order due to my current multi-million-dollar position trimming Jeff Bezos's toenails.
I had someone open a bunch of accounts in my name. Only found out about it when I applied for credit and was denied. Took me a while to get it all sorted out, but the retail companies and credit reporting agencies were very responsive.
Some other Boolean value you'll describe in the forums.
Had my identity stolen as a child, didn't find out about it until I was 18 and applying for college loans.
Actual conversation I had with someone at one of the credit agencies:
"Okay but see, at the time that 45k loan was taken out in my name, I was twelve years old. Are you telling me that a bank gave a loan to a twelve year old child? I mean I know just about anyone could get a mortgage in 2007/2008 but come on, a twelve year old had a 45k line of credit?"
@Collin1000 my buddy is a "jr." and his fathers mortgage showed up on his credit, he has a similar conversation with the person trying to deny his auto loan. He had that happen a lot, fortunately his wasn't fraud, it was just stupid people.
@Collin1000 I've heard of that tactic for identity theft. A 12-year-old isn't going to do anything with credit for a few years, so it stands a better chance of going undetected for a while.
@PocketBrain Yep, that appears to be the method they used. Once someone gets around to finding out about it, the crime is long done and the traces of whoever did it are long gone. Well executed.
I voted no, but then I remembered back in the day I had a blockbuster account opened in my name, fortunately they didn't use my SSN. I also happened to frequent that particular blockbuster with a friend of mine and we were buddy buddy with all the girls that worked there, so they removed the account since they knew me... I found out because I received some sort of notice in the mail, thankfully they had done it where I knew the manager, so I lucked out not having to fight crazy charges.
After closing an account with T-Mobile, I found out several years later that someone had kept the account open and paid cash for the bills for years. Then they stopped paying and it became my problem. They were in Florida and I'm in California but I still had to prove that it wasn't me. I also had my credit report merged with someone else that had a similar name. How is it even possible for one person to have 2 social security numbers? Now I pay for credit monitoring, clearing that stuff up is a pain in the butt.
@iluvmingos It can happen if your parents didn't really communicate with each other and accidentally reported your birth in two different counties.
More than 20 years ago, long before it was commonplace to treat the victims of identity theft as criminals, NY State gave away info about many many employees. I was one. The miscreant(s) changed the address on one of my credit cards and requested checks, which they used to get $5500 from that account. Ended up with a seven year warning to not issue credit on my report and no other real impact.
Since then, there was a problem maybe 10 years ago when my girlfriend bought gas (never, ever give your credit card to the guy who pumps your gas) and most recently (last summer) when I made the mistake of shopping at Home Depot. All in all, not much of a problem at all, other than the hassle of having to change account numbers.
A pastor In So Cal and I share the same exact name. and he is moderately famous in Christianity, so I got approved for a bunch of stuff. one day I found out I got a ticket I didn't know about. at the end of the day the pastor and I met up to discuss everything. it was a decent good day and he laughed about it all with me. I know not exciting or painful but really cool to learn that some one shares our name and lives not too far away
Someone got a hold of my debit card info a few years back, and proceeded to make a series of mediocre purchases online. Like, I remember one of 'em was for some shitty little piece of software for converting video formats, like the type of thing you can find for free with little to no effort. But instead they decided spending twenty of my dollars on it was a better idea. If you guys had been around back then I bet they would have cleaned you out of speaker docks.
@nogoodwithnames I used to work for a tech company, we had a high ratio of stolen credit cards used on digital goods. The credit card processing company told us that fraudsters used digital goods to test if the cards were still active/clean before they went to make bigger ticket purchases or use them in person when police could be called. Apparently it is also common for fraudsters to make donations to charities using stolen credit cards as well for this same purpose.
@Collin1000 Yes my gofundme had 3 under $10 donations from identity thieves… this is apparently a fairly common event on crowdfunding sites.
How many of us are blue cross/blue shield customers?
http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_27462893/health-insurer-anthem-hit-by-hackers-millions-records
@Collin1000 The financial institution where I work had to replace 42000 cards because of this one. Tokens (read that as Apple Pay) are the smart way to go. Your card number is never used only a 1 time use token is sent.
Had a girl in pajamas come to my apartment door crying saying that she had a fight with her boyfriend and needed to call someone. I handed her my cordless land line (early 2000's) and gave her some privacy while she called from the breezeway. Tuned out she was activating one of my credit cards she got a hold of from the mail. I got the bill a month later. She spent like 500 on gas, clothes, and Jack in the Box.
@toddnet - That's so cold.
@toddnet That's when you tell them to hide in your bed, under the covers...
@toddnet I had my next door neighbor (apartment) give a sob story about her phone, let her use mine, she was on for about an hour to several places in Asia and I had hundreds of dollars on my bill. I had to pay it since I had let her use my phone. Before the phone bill came in she bought an antique piece of furniture from me using a check she had stolen (her mom was a real estate agent, she'd use the lockbox to get into houses calling saying she was showing the house, then pull a few checks from way down in the check pile and use them. She then skipped town but was caught many states away when she went to get her mercedes serviced.
I used a credit card online to buy a gift card for my nephew at Toys 'r Us. When I got my bill there were 4 extra small charges I didn't recognize. Fortunately there were 800 phone numbers on the charges so I was able to call, only to find out they were memberships to two "adult" video clubs and the first videos. I had to agree to a statement that they weren't my charges in order to get them removed. No, really, the weren't mine. Seriously.
@heartny I've been hit on my credit card a few times after online purchases, but my credit card company detected the problem each time, called me about it and cancelled the card and issued a new one that I received the next day. I never had to pay a cent. But I've made it a habit to only purchase online with a card that has a low limit of $500 just to avoid larger headaches. The last time it was stolen someone tried to purchase over $3k with it. DENIED!!! :-)
Some guy in Georgia tried to file taxes in my name to get a refund, but the joke's on him because I was flipping 16 and was already claimed as a dependent and also I never actually contributed to society that year.
No one would want my identity.
@TheCO2 IDK, your identity and history are pretty damned interesting.
@Thumperchick Glad you think so. Wanna trade?
One of my buddies had his CC info stolen, and while he was resolving it with the card company, they were telling him the charges/asking him what was/wasn't his. The person who stole the card somehow made like a several-hundred dollar purchase at Dominos Pizza. We had a good laugh trying to figure out how that's even possible…
@brhfl Probably had a buddy who worked there and ran the card and took an equivalent amount of cash. Yes, I know that's stupid. But a lot of people who steal credit card numbers are stupid.
@SSteve They would have to be incredibly stupid, because cash and credit cards are completely separate, so they drawer would have been WAY off.
@SSteve Makes more sense than my 'I just stole a CC, time to live out my dream of eating 100 pizzas!' theory.
@brhfl - POS niece did this to my MIL. She first stole 75 YO grandmothers credit card information during a visit, then – while she was working at the take-out window at TacoBell – proceeded to hit up her account for several $50.00 withdrawals every day until she was caught by the management there. MIL refused to press charges, so her grandaughter managed to wipe out all her retirement savings for drugs.
Someone got my credit card number and took two cash advances totaling $13k. The credit card company was very good about immediately taking them off my account.
@SSteve And very good about giving them $13K. It's nice to see they actually try to make everyone happy.
Someone stole my identity once. Now there's two of us without a life. (Oh I totally stole that line)
Had someone call in once to report their card lost/stolen. While the card was being shutdown my rep noticed a charge just coming in. He looked up the merchant (a Best Buy) and called the store. The manager was able to get the woman who had the stolen card. The idiot was still in the store trying to spend a couple more thousand. Unfortunately people getting caught doesn't happen often enough. Usually the financial institution eats the loss. Fraud loss is actually a budgeted item for most large banks.
@Mehrocco_Mole This story has a happy ending - the crook got caught.
I've had my credit cards fraudulently used several times. The worst is when somebody social engineered the DMV to steal my personalized license plate.
I have a personalized license plate that I have had for maybe 35 years, but didn't have on a vehicle for a while. Every year I'd go in to the DMV to pay the retention fee: the first time it took the poor clerk an hour to figure out how to do it. That clerk ended up giving me the receipt for the fee with a stamped date on it. Every year after that I'd walk the clerk through the process (never got the same clerk twice), and got the receipt. Went in one year, and the clerk notified me that the plate was now on a vehicle in SoCal. I showed her all my receipts, and the original plates. She immediately realized that something was wrong; probably the SoCal person persuaded a clerk in the SoCal office to hand it out. To her credit my clerk followed up on it even after she had been taken off the counter duty and was in the back office; it took six months. First they searched their records to see if a letter had ever been sent to me asking if I still wanted the plate; came up negative (duh!). Then they notified the other person that they needed to come in to give up the plates. They did not do so, so eventually my clerk rescinded the other plates and officially gave ownership of the license back to me. The other person would not be able to renew his registration until he came in and got different plates; I have no idea if they did.
The last thing my clerk told me was to put the plates on a vehicle to prevent it from happening again, and I did so.
Yes, but I don't want you to know about it, ok? Stop bugging me already!
@meow57 You can safely send all the details to me. Remember to include your credit card info and your mothers maiden name! Oh and why don't you just share it here?
Yes, and took over a year to clear it up. An employee of my insurance agent was the culprit. Felt better knowing that I didn't do something stupid to expose myself, but the whole ordeal was a major PITA. Thankfully the rat bastard is in jail now.
I had a rental car agency employee steal my card numbers. The dumb ass used it to pay his phone bill. But he also opened a western union account in my name and sent himself money in his real name. Then he used it at Lowe's for close to $800. My credit card company shut it down within 18 hours, before I even knew there was a problem. The police refused to take a report because I couldn't prove where the original crime took place (WTF? - I KNEW where it had to take place because it was the only place where my card had been out of my sight in years and I wasn't using it much because I was broke) So I spent 2 days on the phone, got this shit's name from Western Union (they have a police line and we talked long enough the lady either felt sorry for me or forgot I wasn't police) and phone number from them. I gave that to the police and they still didn't do anything. It wasn't until the credit card company wanted a police report number that they did anything (eg let me file a report).
TWO YEARS later something possessed me to google the guy. Turns out he was, just two weeks earlier, locked up for two accounts of credit card fraud. So I called my local police. They still didn't want to go after him; said they wouldn't be able to bring his past history into it, he'd be spiffed up for the trial and get off. I pushed and pushed. Gave them all the evidence again, reminded them that they didn't even need to go look for the guy as he was in jail. So two months after that they finally had me sign a report (called them weekly and then twice weekly). Now 7 months later I need to call the police to find out what happened. Thanks for the reminder LOL.
Nope crime does not happen in my town. No siree it does not. We don't take reports about stuff being stolen out of garages either since the garage door was not shut tight. Never mind that we had a crime spree with things being taken off porches, out of open garages, out of backyards… Nope not a crime to steal if the owner does not lock it up I guess. I then asked if it was OK for me to roam the neighborhood and take things I wanted from others that was out in the open or in unlocked sheds and garages, trespassing on their property to do so - perhaps their car out of the driveway is now OK given the logical conclusion to their reasoning? Geesh.
Our town is proud of their very low crime rate. Yup for all the run down apartment complexes we have, we. do. not. have. crime. in. this. city. and especially not in our neighborhood ( which abuts about 1000 units of nearly shut down due to the sheer volume of code violations apartments)...
@Kidsandliz Sorry to hear you had such a crappy experience with the police.
@Kidsandliz "We have more important things to do..."
Yeah, one time I stole this dude's identity and it turned out he had worse financial problems than me. The interest rates on the credit cards I got in his name were outrageous. 24%! I thought I was the criminal. In this case, I was definitely a victim of identity theft.
More than once. One that was too stupid to even believe. I had gotten a computer from Dell and had a Dell account. Dell called me wanting to know if I'd ordered something (I hadn't) and they cancelled the order. I went into my account and there was a shipping address to the guy (in St Louis MO) who had purchased it.
The other one was directly from a bank account back in 2008. Brian had borrowed 25K from his mom to buy a tractor (the little red one in that Mahindra ad). He was working on getting a better deal on it, you know, had the money, then started the negotiating. So, the money was just sitting in the account. It wasn't a very active account for us, just a seperate one I was using for cat related stuff. It also had a $2500 overdraft with it. Every month I check all of our accounts, just to see how they're doing. I checked this one and it had $96.00 in it. WTF? And the overdraft was cleaned out.
Fortunately, this account has copies of all the withdrawal slips and deposit slips available online. I printed them all out. There were six withdrawal slips, all signed by me. Except it wasn't my signature and that wasn't how I spelled my name. And they all happened in South Dakota and Minnesota. And you know how withdrawals over a certain amount need to be signed by a supervisor? They weren't. (To this day I believe one of the thieves was on the inside - here's an account with lots of money and very little activity, they won't notice it right away.) The bank was certain it was one of us who did this. "Are you sure your husband didn't do this?" Yeah, he was here in the morning, here at five in the afternoon. I'm pretty certain he didn't hop on a jet back to the midwest to take his own money".
One of the slips was transferring money to some sort of state child account (support maybe?). It took months, but we finally got the money back into our account. All of the footwork was done by me over the internet. The phone calls, investigating the withdrawal slips. The bank was pretty useless, except for the sweet clerk at one of the banks at the grocery store. She was the one who gave me the information that got me started, she was very helpful. But the bank manager where we had to fill out the paperwork was a moron. He had me fill out one report for all six transactions, when it should have been one report per transaction. It took a month before we found this out and I had to redo.
The following year, I got a call from the FBI asking me for information and I faxed everything I had over to them. They'd found the people and they were up in the Los Angeles area at that point.
Last month I tried to set up external transfers for one of our accounts and was told there was a hold on one of the accounts. I called and it wasn't a hold, but an alert for the old account. They took it off.
@lisaviolet the police should have to pay us when we do their work!
@Kidsandliz I agree. We have a Ranger and once upon a time it had a shell on it. Brian had a non-working compressor in the back, strapped down, because he was planning on taking it in to be repaired. One night, we heard a loud crash outside and looked out the window (bedroom looks out to the street) and there were some dirtbags at the back of the truck. Brian runs out in his underwear and the dirtbags jumped back into their little dirtbag truck and drove off. They'd broken the glass window on the back of the shell. It was an older model shell and they no longer made them so replacing the glass would have cost more than a new shell. My truck no longer has a shell.
The dirtbags left behind a box cutter (they were using it to slice the straps that kept the compressor from moving). I called the police to let them know I had evidence. The guy was nice enough when he told me "this isn't like television, looks like you guys have a new box cutter". Gee, thanks.
And don't forget my niece who's car was broken into when she was hiking. She was in the process of moving so she had a lot of her things in it and the police didn't do squat. She's the one who kept on top of it (checking Craigslist on an hourly basis) and ended up getting the people caught who did it. They had lots of stolen goods at their home.
One of my favorite things is to take a poll about identity theft moments after buying an extra power supply for my laptop using my credit card online.
@Duggle Maybe they are trying to indirectly gauge interest for an ianti-dentify theft daily deal. Heck if it woks as well as the servers on fuku night they might make a mint LOL
My debit card was skimmed at a gas station in Surprise, AZ during Spring training. $500.00 was withdrawn from a bank in California using my pin. It was a debit card from a federal credit union. This was in 2010, before you had to put in your zip code when using a card at the pump. I filed a police report at the Surprise police, and took that report to the credit union. There were 33 victims according to the bank. Hmmm.
And, another year, a box of checks was stolen from the mailbox, the rural route kind. Classless, white drug-head, 5kids under the age of 7, 33 year old woman, started signing my name to checks and trying to cash them at local check cashing stores. One of those stores, called the phone number on the check and asked me if I bought a $1000.00 couch from this lady. I said call the police my checks have been stolen. I didn't even know the checks had been sent, but realized they had been stolen. Police arrested her, I pressed charges, she got incarcerated. I didn't have any money stolen, but I had to close that account, and then....open a new one, which messed up the timing on my sons, baseball camp registration fees!!!
My husband's identity was stolen and false income tax returns were filed in his name to claim bogus refunds. Took me months of sending real documented proof of the actual figures to get it straightened out. I'm never quite sure it is completely settled, and we got audited as a result of the bastards who used the address of an empty lot in Miami to file returns in our name. We are now accepted into the official IRS stolen identity program and now we need to have a special private PIN to conduct any business with the IRS or to file returns. What a stressful pain in the arse that was and continues to be. A thought... is this leading up to Meh offering a deal to sign up with one of those identity and credit protection programs like Lifelock?
@donnameh the name life lock always makes me think of gridlock… not sure I would want that.
@Kidsandliz haha actually gridlock is a pretty good description of the tortuous process I had to go through with the IRS. But I have no opinion about Lifelock because I don't use it, even after all these problems. But I do tend to pay cash for a lot more things because I'm more wary. I pay cash at the gas pump and at Target and other chains using those funky old POS systems that have been hacked a few times.
Had someone open a Verizon Wireless account in my name last year; only found out because I started getting bills for it. Oddly, no usage whatsoever (data, text, or voice), so I guess they opened the account to get a free phone to try and sell, or swap ESNs on.
Verizon's still sending me bills for the cost of the phone, and sent it to collections once (who sent it back to Verizon once I sent them a copy of the police report), despite their fraud department saying the account's been closed and written off as fraud.
They also applied for a couple of credit cards, but my credit is bad enough that I can only get store cards. Whoever did it had my DOB, SSN, and obviously my home address. The account was opened the day after I quit my last job, and their fraud department told me the account was opened at a Target just up the street from there. Funny coincidence, ain't it?
Not yet... but a sibling of mine has been hit 3 times. She's more careful than I am, so I don't know how it keeps being her.
@Thumperchick Seems like the ones trying to be most careful are the ones who get hit. Must be doing it wrong.
A few months ago I logged into my Pinterest (don't judge, there are a ton of awesome recipes on there, that's also the only thing I use it for) and surprisingly found about 20 random high-end women's shoes pinned by me.
I immediately texted my girlfriend with screenshots telling her I found her funny joke only to have her swear she didn't do it.
Somehow my Pinterest account was compromised and I guess whoever did it really likes shoes. I reset my password after that and I still get emails from someone trying to get in every few weeks.
@JonT Happened to a friend of mine, but she didn't have a Pinterest account. So we had to get her in and lock down an account she never wanted
@JonT Now I have to go check my pinterest account... It seems like the silliest social media account to take over, though.
@Thumperchick right!? I don't understand what they were after. It's not connected to any of my other accounts and has no other personal or payment information besides my email address.
@JonT Any purple shoes?
@JonT maybe they confused your login with theirs? I have a coworker who's login to our software ois very close to a customers login name....she routinely locks him out by typing in the wrong passwords multiple times
@tightwad very very unlikely, especially since they actually DID get in somehow...so unless they have a really similar email address and the same password as me...something else weird happened.
Yea some guy named @Marcus once tried to steal all my work emails...
Over a year ago someone withdrew a ton of money from my accounts, then used it and my name to start an e-commerce site directly competing with the one I had just sold to a large online retailer. There are rumors he (she?) even named a giant wall decal of a rodent after me. All of this has caused me great emotional turmoil, but thankfully my finances are back in order due to my current multi-million-dollar position trimming Jeff Bezos's toenails.
The thief is still at large.
@darksaber99999 did he look anything like this?
@JonT Hopefully this gif is admissible as evidence.