I presume that the collection was blocked from your credit report under the identity theft provisions of FCRA 605B based on submission of a police report to the CRA.
That process is intended to provide relief to consumers by removing information asserted to have resulted from identity theft in a police report from their credit reports.
It involves only the CRA, and is not a factual determination that the information is actually fraudulent. It is only a credit report blocking provision.
It does not bar the debt collector from continued efforts to collect on the asserted debt, or to exercise its permissible purpose under FCRA 604 to obtain the consumer's credit report. It might be argued that the CRA is also blocked from providing showing of the inquiries to third parties, but that is again a limitation upon the CRA, not the debt collector. However, if the inquiries are being coded as soft, then by definition, they are being blocked from credit reports being provided by the CRA to any third party.
I am unclear as to how filing of an identity theft report and subsequent blocking of the information from the consumer's credit report negates the separate permissible purpose provided under FCRA 604 for the debt collector to obtain the consumer's credit report.
I would seek legal opinion on that issue before initiating a civil complaint for violation of FCRA 604.
