IDENTITY THIEVES ARE OFTEN PEOPLE YOU KNOW WELL
Identity Theft by Family Members: What You Need to Know
Family Members as the Main Perpetrators
Most of us read about these massive hacks into corporate databases like JP Morgan Chase, Home Depot, and even Equifax and assume that they will result in rampant identity theft, but the truth is that as identity theft lawyers we rarely see new consumer cases of identity theft as a result. Most of those corporate hackers are after different uses for their information than opening fraudulent accounts or putting consumer data on the dark web. For all the fearmongering that goes on out there, the likely result is that your credit report is probably not going to have an identity theft account because of some third-party negligence or corporate data breach. So, if identity theft accounts are typically not because of some hack, who is likely to steal your identity?
Emotional and Legal Dilemmas for Victims
Believe it or not, the majority of identify theft cases that we have seen are perpetrated by family members. Children steal their parents’ identity, parents open accounts using their children’s social security numbers, spouses (and particularly ex or about to be ex-spouses) open new accounts on the way out the door and then there are the occasional friends, acquaintances, and previous romantic interests. These are the people who have access to your identifying information, people you trust the most and the ones that get desperate and sink to such levels. Many fraudulent student loan cases that we see involve parents, children, and even grandparents taking out loans that they say they are going to repay, but when the bills come due, they never seem to keep up with the payments or never even start to make the payments. By the time the family member learns about the fraudulent accounts it is too late, the damage is done, and their credit is destroyed.
Why Credit Reporting Agencies Make Removal Difficult
Occasionally the rift is so deep that the family member wants to go to the police and prosecute the perpetrator, but most of the time the family member does not want to call the police on their relative and decides to suffer in silence. What they really want is to clear their good name, get the fraudulent accounts off their credit file and protect their parent or child from going to jail. Sometimes credit reporting agencies know who is stealing these identities, and they could care less about protecting the family member. It is not like Experian or Equifax has any direct financial interest in a fraudulent credit card that was opened in the name of a child when they were still in school, but the credit reporting agencies seem to want to make removal of identity theft accounts as difficult and painful as possible for the victim to remove the fraud because the credit reporting agencies’ true customer is the furnisher of the data, not the consumer. The credit agencies want to force the victim to file a police report and prosecute their family members so that they think twice before trying to dispute or correct an identity theft related accounts.
The Truth About Police Reports and the FCRA
Banks, lenders, utility companies, debt collectors and other creditors are huge customers of the Credit Reporting Agencies (Experian, Equifax and Trans Union) and pay them millions of dollars every year to purchase their credit reports and related products. Those entities do have significant financial interest in keeping fraudulent accounts on the credit reports of the victims, because the victim is the only one that will ever pay them anything. As long that that account remains on the consumer’s credit report, they still have leverage to make them pay. In fact, we believe that large banks and lenders pressure credit reporting agencies to make it as difficult as possible for consumers to remove and correct identity theft accounts. To help their real customers, the credit reporting agencies do just that and secretly establish internal procedures that do not allow their employees or processors to correct identity theft accounts unless the consumer sends in a written police report that meets hyper technical requirements that the police report may not even be structured to meet. But even a police report is no guarantee that the credit reporting agency will delete or correct the data. All three of the credit reporting agencies make it even more difficult by putting restrictions on the sort of police report that they will accept. In the end, the chances that a consumer can correct a fraudulent account on their own without legal assistance is very unlikely.
How Blankingship and Christiano Can Help
The dirty little secret is that these credit reporting agencies know that the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”) does not require a consumer to file a police report or send it into the agencies in order to have their fraudulent accounts removed. Because they know that, the agencies will never tell a consumer that they must file a police report and send it to the CRA. Instead, they try to be clever and “encourage” consumers to send in a police report or confuse them by saying that if they want to block the reporting of a fraudulent account under a different potion of the FCRA (§1681c-2) that they do have to send in a valid police report. The truth, however, (and all the credit reporting agencies know this and admit it) is that consumers do not need to go to the police and report their family member to get these fraudulent accounts removed from their credit files. If the consumer disputes the account, the agencies are required to conduct a reinvestigation and remove the identity theft account unless they can verify that the account is legitimate. Since the process is rigged and tilted against the consumer, most consumers are going to need the help of a skilled and knowledgeable credit report lawyer that can not only correct and solve the problem, but sue the credit reporting agencies and the furnishers of the fraudulent data for not taking it off and correcting their credit report as required by federal law.
Blankingship and Christiano, P.C. has been representing victims of identity theft for more than 20 years. We know all the tricks that these furnishers, credit reporting agencies, and their high-powered lawyers practice and can hold them accountable for their violations of the FCRA. Fortunately, Congress anticipated these problems and added to the FCRA a provision that requires the defendants to pay the legal fees that consumers incur correcting their credit and that allows the law firm to accept these cases on a contingency fee or percentage fee basis. Consumers don’t have to be afraid that if they hire a skilled identity theft lawyer that they will go even further into debt. To the contrary, the law allows them to not only correct their identity theft issues but also recover monetary damages for the emotional distress and financial harm that these violators have caused. Contrary to what the credit reporting agencies would have you believe, you don’t have to turn in your family member, and you can get your good name and credit restored. Contact us today for a free case review.
