Closed account re-opened & used without permission. How is this not fraud?

[Anonymous]

So I have a strange situation. I had a credit card with First Niagra Bank in Western NY. It was a joint account with another person. The account was closed in March 2016 with a remaining balance to be paid. I finished paying off the balance in August 2016. At the time my credit report confirmed this.

Now around this time, FirstNiagra was bought by KeyBank. Somehow (without my permission) an account was opened by KeyBank in March 2017, as an Individual account in my name, with the other person as a signatory. And according to KeyBank, this is the same account, even though the other one had been closed a year prior. This was never reported on my credit report. This person then maxed out the card, incurred late fees etc. and it was put into collections. Still not reported. Then I began receiving phone calls from Key the bank saying I owed them money. I assumed it was a scam to try and get my SS number. I then went into a branch location and was told I did, in fact, have an account somehow, and it was in collections. So they suggested I contact their fraud department. Which I did, only to have them finally report the account and drop my Credit score 100 points (November 2018). Then in February, the fraud department called me saying they had investigated and it wasn't fraud and would have their Executive accounts department review it. They reviewed it and also said it wasn't fraud.

Does anyone have any ideas on what I can do next?

[Anonymous]

file police report    yes they will go after the person 

file complaint with cfpb 

DW and I had a relative assume our id while we on an extended trip and try to sell our properties, business, re fi cash out other properties

They got caught when of the title co to go,  they picked one owned by a friend of ours who knew we on a very extended trip .  It was interesting.  We prosecuted 2 out of 3 involved. They got 6 months in prison and 5 years probation. Only one at time went to prison so we would NOT have to become foster parents to their daughter.  The third party supplied them all the info and was very aged and did not understand what they did was wrong.  Once their probation was  was over the celebrated by filing false tax returns in our names that took another 4 months to fix.     I have an other issue with this party now.   But that is another story  

[RobertEG]

You have information in your credit file that you assert was based on someone else having used your identity.

More specifically, that information is the opening of an account in your name without your authorization.

The FCRA contains an identity theft process that permits a consumer to get such information blocked from further inclusion in their credit report without any involvement or approval of the involved creditor.

If the consumer is willing to put their assertion that the account was never authorized by him or her, and thus was based on someone else having used their identity, into a sworn statement before a law enforcement agency, the CRA must then block the information from the consumer's credit report.  See FCRA 605B, and the detailed discussion of the FCRA identity theft process provided in the sticky post in the upper portion of the General Credit Topics forum.

Your first step should thus be to file a police report putting your assertion into sworn form, and thus submitting the police report to the CRAs as a identity theft report.  That will not resolve the factual accuracy of the asserted identity theft, but will get its impact removed from your credit report, and thus credit score.