Victim of ID theft, need help.

[Anonymous]

I recently became aware of the ability to see my credit reports for free, and discovered 7 negative accounts on my credit that don't belong to me.

I've talked to a few of the companies and they aren't really wanting to help, because the address on the accounts IS my mailing address, but somehow these theives must of had the cards forwarded to their own address.

I'm also getting collection notices in the mail now because these people not only stole my info and obtained cards, but charged hundreds and never made a payment.

So now I need to figure out if it's best to get ahold of the company that issued these accounts, or the debt collectors themselves.

Since so much time has passed (over 8 months) since these accounts were furnished, I have a bad feeling I'm going to have trouble getting them off my report.

[RobertEG]

Look at the top of this General Credit Topics forum for the sticky post "Victim of Identity Theft ?..."  highlighted in green.

There is a whole section explaining in detail how to use the identity theft process under the FCRA,

[willwar14]

1.) File a police report.

2.) Go through the ID theft process, the ID theft is pretty recent so it should be easier vs. a few years.

3.) IME Experian and Transunion are the easiest to deal with when it comes to this, Equifax IME will just treat it as a dispute and not a block request.

4.) Deal with the original creditor directly, since its pretty recent.

If you have any other questions please feel free to message me, I helped both my parents go through this process (still going through it with EQ) so I know a bit about it.

edit: Forgot to say, good luck! its not fun, but thats life :/.

[RonM21]

Sorry for your struggles. If you follow the recommendations of the poster's above, hopefully you will be able to begin to get this fixed. Best of luck and please update when you can.

[takeshi74]

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@RobertEG wrote:

Look at the top of this General Credit Topics forum for the sticky post "Victim of Identity Theft ?..."  highlighted in green.

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Don't overlook the stickies.  They're stickies because the information is commonly requested and useful.