Asking for a family member.
A family member started getting bank account opening/welcome letters and a Square Cash Visa Debit card for a Cash App account starting last month, none of which they applied for. A few things did jump out at me:
1. The correspondence were all sent to their home address which strikes me as slightly odd if someone stole her identity. Though it is possible that there are other accounts out there for which the mailing address is to the ID thief
2. In order to open savings/bank accounts, is it not required to have the full SSN for identity verification? I guess it's probably safe to assume that their SSN has been compromised in that case.
3. They checked their credit reports with the big 3 bureaux and no new credit accounts show up so thus far, the fraudulent accounts that we know of are all deposit accounts that don't require credit inquiries or CR reporting.
The family member is filing a report with the FTC and will be filing a police report soon. In addition, they are getting credit monitoring and will at least be putting fraud alerts on their CRs and likely be locking them. I've told them to consider pulling their ChexSystems, EWS, and LexisNexis reports and freezing those if possible.
Aside from the above steps, are there any other suggestions for what they should do? Any other reporting agencies that they can pull from to make sure there aren't more fraudulent accounts that we do not know of? I'm not aware but is there any way to stop banks from opening new accounts in their name? Or at the very least, are there services that will monitor for new bank accounts akin to credit monitoring?
Even though none of the fraudulent accounts thus far are credit accounts that can run up balances, one of the things that they are worried about is someone opening a bank account and then incurring debts/overdrafts/fees which the bank then comes after them for. Is that a realistic scenario to worry about?
Thank for reading and for any help!
