We have all seen and read numerous articles on how to avoid, or at least minimize the risks of, being a victim of identity theft. What I have noticed is a distinct lack of information on what to do after your identity has been stolen.
I investigate identity theft and related crimes for a living. One common question that I hear from complainants is “What do I do now?” Many of them believe that notifying the police will solve all of their problems and that their work is done. That, unfortunately, is not the case.
There are several ways that you can be affected by ID theft. If you have lost a credit card or had it stolen, the crook will run up charges on your card quickly, assuming that you will discover that you will notice that it is missing quickly. The same would apply to a lost or stolen checkbook.
If your driver’s license and social security number are lost or stolen, a thief may open up credit card accounts online, and have the credit cards sent to them. In this scenario, you will probably not know that you have a problem until credit collectors start calling you demanding money. This is the classic identity theft model, and can be the biggest challenge for you to overcome.
What Do I Do Now?
If you have discovered that you are a victim of ID theft, either by checking your accounts and noticing unauthorized activity, or by letters and phone call from debt collectors, it is time to get busy with damage control.
The first thing to do, even before you call the police, is to contact you bank or credit card company and freeze the account. The reason for this is twofold: first, it will help minimize monetary loss on your part, and two, most banks and creditors have a time period in which you must notify them to protect yourself. Make the notifications immediately to keep from getting side-tracked with the rest of the things you must do. Let the bank and/or credit card issuer know that you will be getting back with them to give them a police report number.
Now call the police department where you live. It does not matter if your identification is being used in your city or halfway across the world; notify your local law enforcement agency. They are required by federal law to take the report. If you live in a small jurisdiction, they may not be aware of this, so tell them that the Federal Trade Commission requires them to take the report, even though it will be investigated elsewhere. Everybody you talk to about your identity theft will want a police report number, so make sure to have it handy when you are contacting creditors.
After you have made a police report, contact any of the three national credit bureaus and put a fraud alert on your account. The bureau that you contact will notify the other two bureaus. For Equifax, call 1-800-525-6285. For TransUnion, call 1-800-680-7289. For Experian, call 1-888-397-3742.
While you are dealing with the credit bureau, get a current copy of your credit report. I have had complainants in the past find cell phone and other accounts on the credit report that they were never made aware of.
If checks are being issued with you name on them, contact the two national check clearing services and notify them of the fact that your identity has been stolen. Checks may be your checks that were stolen, or the criminals may have printed up a batch of checks with your information on them. These checks may even be drawn on a bank at which you have never held an account. The check clearing services are: Check Rite (800-318-8877) and TeleCheck (800-733-3400).
In the early part of the year, law enforcement gets a lot of complaints from people that they have received W-2 forms from companies for which they have never worked. If somebody is using your social security number to work, either in town or in another state, call your local Social Security office or the Social Security Administration’s Fraud Hotline at 1-80-269-0271.
If you believe that your identity may have been compromised by mail being stolen from your mail box, contact your local U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
At least one insurance company has developed an insurance policy to help you deal with identity theft. Some people think that purchasing this insurance is a no-brainer, as it is relatively cheap. The policy is $72.00 annually for an individual and $140.00 for a family. The policy provides a liaison to handle the notifications to the banks, credit reporting agencies, creditors, and governmental agencies, as well as reimbursement of expenses up to $20,000.00.
To my mind, the insurance policy is unwarranted for most people. If you catch and report the fraud quickly, you will have no financial loss to speak of. I have never had a complainant have $72.00 in postage and long distance phone calls as a result of identity theft. If you do not want to deal with the aggravation of repeated phone calls and dealing with creditors, the expense may make sense to you.
My final tip for dealing with identity theft is perhaps the easiest. Document everything! Keep track of dates, times, and the person you spoke with at each company with whom you are dealing. The best organized of my complainants have had a small folder for each company that they are having contact with, and notes on separate sheets of paper to document each call.
