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Long, but important. You can do everything right and still get effed.
My identity was stolen 3 years ago. They now have my SS#, prior address & phone, my current address, phone & email, my education history & my work history. Anybody now can buy that info and impersonate me. :( By the time my 7 year 'fraud alert' runs out, I intend to have a new physical addy, new work history, new email, new phone and new degree to add to my education history.
I didn't carry my SS in my wallet. I didn't shop online. I didn't lose or have a credit card stolen. I was very careful and conservative.
The theft was by former colleagues operating a ring out of a major multinational computer corporation.
It started with a laptop stolen from the company that manages (what's left of) our pensions, out of their rental car parked in their client's parking lot in Palo Alto, CA.
The police assured everyone it was just a random theft. And the corporations involved assured us that our information was encrypted. We were given new pin #s and free credit monitoring. I didn't get the notice because they didn't have my current address, so I didn't have the free credit monitoring.
A couple months later, a former colleague (now sitting in my old job, to boot) contacted me for a potentially big freelance project. He asked me to send my resume so he could clear it through his new manager.
The same day he confirmed receiving my resume, just 10 miles from his house, at an auto dealership, somebody did an unauthorized credit bureau search on me.
The next day, somebody impersonated me and added a new person to my account, named Heddy Packard.
The day after that, somebody changed my address to one in California.
2 days after that somebody reported my credit card lost or stolen, had it cancelled and a new one sent to my new California address. Also ran up $4500 in charges.
A couple days after that, I tried to use my credit card and was turned down. That's when their scheme unraveled. Fortunately the $4500 charge was *immediately* cancelled, and I thank Citi Identity Theft Solutions for that. The rep there had a very similar case the day before.
Oh, did I mention that my former colleague's wife, Mrs. Colleague, is a VP at the finance company that had the pension laptop stolen?
That the laptop was stolen from Mrs. Colleague's Massachusetts branch?
And I can't help but wonder who, at Mrs. Colleague VP's branch, got to go on the boondoggle trip to California.
In any event, when I had all the details and put the timeline together, I called the FTC to update my theft report in their online clearinghouse. The rep freaked out and suggested that I contact my former employer's HR dept. to let them know that I'd been, in her words, "made a fraudulent offer of employment for the purpose of obtaining my personal information."
I called at least a dozen times, but they don't answer their phone or return calls. I tried a different HR number and got an admin who freaked out and promised someone would get back to me w/in 48 hours. The next day she called me back and gave me the same # to call where they never answered the phone or returned calls. I finally left them an excrutiatingly long and detailed message.
I also notified the finance company, who repeated the party line but asked more and more detailed questions. We are now on our 3rd year of free credit monitoring. I believe mine should last for life, because I can never get my ID back. It's out there and it can be sold over and over.
Nothing was ever done. I reported everything to the police, who are supposed to give the info to the FBI. I never heard back from anybody. My former colleague still has my old job. Mrs. Colleague is still a VP at the finance company.
Oh, and I heard from a friend a few months ago. He got a letter from the Big Computer Company -- the one that never returned my calls or took any action. This time a laptop with his former organization's information (an outsourced function) was stolen from the Big Computer Company. So now he's getting free credit monitoring, courtesy of the computer company.
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