I have a "Victim ID #" from USDoJ but unsure how to proceed with cleaning up my credit report

[HarleyGirlInDallas]

After months of lurking through these boards, I finally decided to subscribe to myFICO because I'm trying to decide the best course of action on my personal finances. My preference is to be an all-cash kind of girl and I've never filed my taxes early in my life per the advice of my CPA's. I mention this to explain why I didn't pay attention to my credit report. 

In 2015, I received a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice informing me that I had been assigned a "Victim ID number" due to a subsidiary of Experian selling ALL my personal info to a crime syndicate in Southeast Asia. Evidently, my info was used to open accounts, file early tax returns, etc., AND re-sold to other criminals.  Truth is indeed stranger than fiction and, needless to say, I keep that letter and envelope in a very secure place. An article from Reuters on the criminal case can be viewed here: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-experian-databreach/exclusive-u-s-states-probing-security-breach-...

Fast forward to the past 8 months or so, and I've really buckled down in an attempt to get my credit score to a respectable level.  When I first saw it after the breach, it was in the high 400's. Over the past year, I opened up secured credit cards with Citi, CapitalOne, and NavyFederal. CapitalOne gave me an UNsecured card about 6 months ago and notified me last week they were raising the limit from $300 to $500 and I applied to Fingerhut who gave me a $500 limit but I've never used it.  ALL cards are kept paid off. I'll use them for small dollar items just to show activity, but I don't carry a balance.

In June, I opted to purchase a car because Uber fares went through the roof due to the pandemic -- $38 to go 6 miles round-trip in the Downtown Dallas area was ridiculous. That's literally a car payment, insurance, and gas at 5x a week. NOTE: I had to present the letter showing that I had been identified as a victim and pay $2,000 cash down rather than the $1,000 I had been hoping to pay. The car is a 2020 Hyundai Elantra with 8k miles as it was a rental car; apparently Westlake Financial was the only lender willing to work with me.

SO....the car situation was a huge wake-up call that I need to get things on track fast in case I am ever again in a position in which I need to have financial options.  I feel like I'm paying way too much in interest on the car and would like to refinance at a lower rate and I seem to be stuck in getting turned down for gas cards or any other major credit card with the reason being due to "High Installment Loan Balances".  But, remember, *I* do not carry balances and this must reference the 7 credit cards on my credit reports that I didn't open and must be connected to the ID theft.

And now, I turn to you wise people because I haven't seen this particular issue ever mentioned on these forums and I welcome feedback.

• All my current cards show an "exceptional" payment history.
• I'm carrying a balance of 1% of my available credit lines.
• The 7 anchors dragging me down are those 7 credit cards that I didn't open and I have no desire to pay them off. Small-dollar balances, under $1k each, but not mine.

I look forward to replies, advice, and suggestions!

[AllZero]

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/General-Credit-Topics/Victim-of-Identity-Theft-What-To-Do-to-Protec...

[K-in-Boston]

I would work vigorously on having the accounts that are not yours removed as soon as possible.  Get your full credit reports from annualcreditreport.com and go to work on anything that is not yours.

The credit reason on installment balances will not be referencing your revolving credit cards, but rather any installment loans, whether they are yours or not.

Also a very important distinction should be made that a subsidiary of Experian did NOT sell your information, but rather was compromised in a data breach.

[HarleyGirlInDallas]

@K-in-Boston -- I appreciate your reply.  However, I respectfully disagree with your summation that the subsidiary did NOT sell my data because you have not been on my side nor have you seen the information I was sent by the U.S. Department of Justice. I stand by my statements.  Thank you for your time.

[HarleyGirlInDallas]

@AllZero - thank you for taking the time to send me this link -- it's much appreciated.

[coldfusion]

---

@HarleyGirlInDallas wrote:

@K-in-Boston -- I appreciate your reply.  However, I respectfully disagree with your summation that the subsidiary did NOT sell my data because you have not been on my side nor have you seen the information I was sent by the U.S. Department of Justice. I stand by my statements.  Thank you for your time.

---

What you didn't mention was if it was deliberately and knowingly sold to elements of organized crime or if the data were obtained through misrepresentation or other fraudulent means such as via compromise of legitimate credentials or actions taken by a disgruntled employee.    I'd find the former difficult to believe, the latter much more plausible.

Regardless of how the release of data was accomplished, as was suggested you should begin by obtaining copies of your credit reports and be prepared to file disputes and corrections.  If you haven't already done so I would also suggest you also obtain your Lexis Nexis personal consumer report and work to clean that up as well as necessary.

You're also a good candidate to freeze (not lock, freeze) your reports should you choose to do so.

[CreditInspired]

---

@HarleyGirlInDallas wrote:

After months of lurking through these boards, I finally decided to subscribe to myFICO because I'm trying to decide the best course of action on my personal finances. My preference is to be an all-cash kind of girl and I've never filed my taxes early in my life per the advice of my CPA's. I mention this to explain why I didn't pay attention to my credit report. 

In 2015, I received a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice informing me that I had been assigned a "Victim ID number" due to a subsidiary of Experian selling ALL my personal info to a crime syndicate in Southeast Asia. Evidently, my info was used to open accounts, file early tax returns, etc., AND re-sold to other criminals.  Truth is indeed stranger than fiction and, needless to say, I keep that letter and envelope in a very secure place. An article from Reuters on the criminal case can be viewed here: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-experian-databreach/exclusive-u-s-states-probing-security-breach-...

Fast forward to the past 8 months or so, and I've really buckled down in an attempt to get my credit score to a respectable level.  When I first saw it after the breach, it was in the high 400's. Over the past year, I opened up secured credit cards with Citi, CapitalOne, and NavyFederal. CapitalOne gave me an UNsecured card about 6 months ago and notified me last week they were raising the limit from $300 to $500 and I applied to Fingerhut who gave me a $500 limit but I've never used it.  ALL cards are kept paid off. I'll use them for small dollar items just to show activity, but I don't carry a balance.

In June, I opted to purchase a car because Uber fares went through the roof due to the pandemic -- $38 to go 6 miles round-trip in the Downtown Dallas area was ridiculous. That's literally a car payment, insurance, and gas at 5x a week. NOTE: I had to present the letter showing that I had been identified as a victim and pay $2,000 cash down rather than the $1,000 I had been hoping to pay. The car is a 2020 Hyundai Elantra with 8k miles as it was a rental car; apparently Westlake Financial was the only lender willing to work with me.

SO....the car situation was a huge wake-up call that I need to get things on track fast in case I am ever again in a position in which I need to have financial options.  I feel like I'm paying way too much in interest on the car and would like to refinance at a lower rate and I seem to be stuck in getting turned down for gas cards or any other major credit card with the reason being due to "High Installment Loan Balances".  But, remember, *I* do not carry balances and this must reference the 7 credit cards on my credit reports that I didn't open and must be connected to the ID theft.

And now, I turn to you wise people because I haven't seen this particular issue ever mentioned on these forums and I welcome feedback.

• All my current cards show an "exceptional" payment history.
• I'm carrying a balance of 1% of my available credit lines.
• The 7 anchors dragging me down are those 7 credit cards that I didn't open and I have no desire to pay them off. Small-dollar balances, under $1k each, but not mine.

I look forward to replies, advice, and suggestions!

---

Hi and welcome to myFICO,

Do you mind uploading a copy of the DOJ letter with all personal info blacked out? Did you contact DOJ to verify that this was an actual letter from them? Did you file a police report? What was the outcome since you were a victim and it has now been 5+years?

[HarleyGirlInDallas]

"...Do you mind uploading a copy of the DOJ letter with all personal info blacked out? Did you contact DOJ to verify that this was an actual letter from them? Did you file a police report? What was the outcome since you were a victim and it has now been 5+years?"

• Thank you for the welcome.
• In no uncertain terms will I ever upload the letter to a public forum. Besides, the amount of info that would need to be redacted would turn the first page alone into an almost blacked-out box. Making that letter even partially public might allow others to possibly copy, revise, and try to use its format and verbiage for their own nefarious reasons.
• The envelope is real.  The letterhead is real.  The postage is real.
• If you were able to read the letter and the staggering amount of information on how my data was used -- ways in which were not mentioned in the media coverage -- you'd have a much better picture of how screwed up this entire situation has been.
• Yes, I've spoken to the U.S. Department of Justice as a result of their very real letter that was mailed to me.
• Yes, the U.S. Department of Justice has provided me with my Victim ID number.
• No police report was filed.
• The situation lingers on for me regardless of how many years have passed and questionable anomalies pop up at the most interesting of times.
  
  
• "...Ngo made nearly $2 million from his scheme.  The Internal Revenue Service has confirmed that 13,673 U.S. citizens, whose stolen PII was sold on Ngo’s websites, have been victimized through the filing of $65 million in fraudulent individual income tax returns."
  
  
• "...Ngo operated online marketplaces from his home in Vietnam, including “superget.info” and “findget.me,” to sell packages of stolen PII.  These packages, known as “fullz,” typically included a person’s name, date of birth, social security number, bank account number and bank routing number.  Ngo also admitted to acquiring and offering for sale stolen payment card data, which typically included the victim’s payment card number, expiration date, CVV number, name, address and phone number. "
  
  
• "...Hieu Minh Ngo, 25, was sentenced - to 13 years - by U.S. District Court Judge Paul J. Barbadoro of the District of New Hampshire.  Ngo previously pleaded guilty to federal charges brought in the District of New Hampshire and the District of New Jersey, including wire fraud, identity fraud, access device fraud and four counts of computer fraud and abuse."

[HarleyGirlInDallas]

Without knowing the process for due diligence that Experian and its subsidiaries have in place, it's rather challenging to know if the data was knowingly sold or someone colossally dropped the ball.  For what it's worth, you are welcome to check Hieu Minh Ngo's own Wikipedia page:   where this is clearly stated:

"...Ngo was also able to obtain data from Court Ventures, an Experian subsidiary,[4][5] by "posing as a private investigator operating out of Singapore."[6]

Rather disturbing to think that an entity such as Experian and its myriad of subsidiaries could have been so bamboozled. Perhaps the concept of "due diligence" never occurred to them. What I do know is that people like me are still affected and doing our best to clean up the mess.  

[KLEXH25]

Wow, that's insane. I'm so sorry this happened to you @HarleyGirlInDallas 

Since the DoJ recognizes that you are a victim of identity theft, and there is a victim ID number, isn't there a way for you to have those fraudulent accounts removed? You should not be responsible whatsoever for paying those accounts. I agree that you should review your credit reports (if you haven't already), as well as your Lexis Nexus reports, and make sure there are no other surprises.