Bank Fraud Attempt on Me with Follow-ups

With all the unabated crime in the world we consider ourselves lucky to have avoided becoming a victim to it.

But today we apparently became a victim of some form of identity theft when someone requested to open an account with Capital Bank using our name and personal information.

As we understand it, when anyone tries to open an account, a routine check is made with the credit bureaus to make sure there are no problems. Apparently, someone with our personal information applied for an account and a Red Flag prompted the bank to call us to confirm whether or not we had tried to open an account. We had not, so that made it a fraud matter, and the account was promptly stopped before any charges occurred.

Then we were turned over to a credit bureau where we were asked questions related to the incident. We knew nothing and gave an affidavit attesting to our lack of knowledge or involvement in the matter.

Now the credit bureau will flag our name so that whenever any new account is opened in our name, we will be immediately contacted to confirm or deny that we are opening the account. This action will be shared with the other credit bureaus and continue for seven years.

Besides scaring the peanut butter out of us thinking it might be someone phishing for our information (which they already had) or trying to confirm it for some other ulterior motive, such as issuing a credit card which we don't need or want, we were reluctant to answer questions without a lot of questions of our own.

We were also encouraged to file a report with our local police department so that they will have the incident on record should fraud activity be detected that is associated with our name.

We promptly received a confirmation via email of the incident report and instructions on how we can protect ourselves.

Within minutes I received a call from American Express's Fraud Division asking if we had recently tried to open an account with them. No... So they killed the account before any approval was given and will call us in the future anytime an account is requested in our name.

I'm sure we will be receiving more calls in the next few days.

I'm still worried that something might get through the crack and put a blemish on our credit history, but I'm also relieved that the system is working to protect me.


12/9/13 4:30 pm

The Police just left after taking our statement and gathering information about the fraud activity.  We had called them after receiving a copy of a denial letter saying the request for credit to purchase a car in Laporte, Texas (Near Houston) was turned down.  The guy said he was calling from Florida to buy a car for his son in Texas.

The girl at the car dealer smelled a rat and rejected the credit request and we received the notice.  It was the only way we knew what was going on.

But Detective Trainee Judy saw the letter as an opportunity to gather more information about the SOB trying to pull this crime off.  So she called the car dealer.  He immediately referred her to their accountant.  Judy explained everything and was successful in getting more information emailed to us, including an AOL email address of the Perp.  I promptly notified AOL that we are not the person claiming to be us and asked them to take appropriate action.  I probably should have waited because the Police may have been able to trace the email address back to a computer, and thus to the Perp. I still haven't heard from AOL as of 5:25 PM today.

While I was doing that, Judy was calling the Police.  The Police lady arrived about five minutes later, apparently thinking there was a crime in progress at our address.  It took a few minutes to explain everything, and wouldn't you know it, we got another call while the Police was still here. This time it was from Capital One Bank wanting to confirm that we had applied for a credit card.  Of course we had not and the application was rejected when I explained what was happening.

So this Perp is trying hard to make it work, but keeps running into rejections.

I wish he would give up and leave us alone.

Now I've got to sign some documents to mail to the credit bureau confirming that I am a victim and an affidavit saying I had no part in the fraud attempt.

I'm sure there are lots of flags up beside our name by now.  Good... Makes me feel better.