Amy, Illinois
Amy had her identity stolen twice.
The first time she received a letter from a collection agency in Miami Florida, where she has never lived, indicating that her Cingular Wireless account was past due for just over $2,000. She discovered that it was a fraudulent account that had been opened under her former married name. She called Cingular and they forwarded her to Cingular’s Fraud Department. After several conversations the only information they provided her with was that her case had been turned over to the FBI and that it appeared that her information was sold by someone at Equifax, after she recently bought a house and had her credit reviewed for her mortgage. At the end, Cingular took care of everything, telling her that the account had been closed and that she did not owe any money.
Her second ID theft experience, five years later, did not go so smoothly. This time she received a collection agency letter representing Verizon. The agency insisted that she paid the almost $4,000 bill or at least a portion of it up front. They became nasty and insistent with her about paying the bill. Similar to the Cingular incident, she was listed by her former married name and her first name was misspelled as “My” instead of “Amy”. She hung up on them and immediately called Verizon. They didn’t believe her either.
She said, “Not only was I angry that they didn’t believe me and they’re allowing people to open up an account in my name without the appropriate information, but they wouldn’t even give me the bill so I could call all the numbers listed on it to find out who opened the account, or to see if for some reason I recognized any of the numbers on it.” They said she needed her password to access that information, which she obviously didn't have because she never opened the account.
Verizon made it very difficult with many forms to fill out online. She ended filing a police report and was assigned to a detective, who had her call someone “special” at Verizon that ended up taking care of everything. There was an interesting coincidence that the store where the account was opened was in the town of her former address from 5 years ago. She thinks this ID theft occurrence was connected to the first one. The detective had Amy call one of the credit bureaus that would put fraud alerts on all three bureaus. She mentioned she might be overdue to renew the alerts, as they expire every 90 days. “I’m freaked out about giving out any information now,” she said. “This can happen to anybody.”
Amy doesn’t think the detective tried very hard to find the thief. He wouldn’t let her see the bill and call log, since it was not officially under her name anymore. He called a few phone numbers and every time he got on the phone, they hung up on him. The Verizon bill was found to be loosely connected to a ring of other cell phone numbers opened through stolen identity situations in Washington State, but was never officially proven, as most of the phone numbers were out of order.
