Credit Problems

Is Your Credit Affected by Identity Theft?

What's the best way to clean up your credit when, someone opened an account under your name. On top of that, the account was sent to collections and has been charged off.

Ray

---

I don’t know what you mean. Are you a victim of identity theft? Or did a friend or relative use your name in obtaining credit?

Also a charge off doesn’t happen overnight. What did you do when the bill collectors started calling?

Read Your Credit Report for information on how to clean up your credit report if it contains incorrect entries or if you have been victimized.

You might want to hire a lawyer or credit counseling firm to help you clean up this mess.

---

This happened to my friend. Well according to my friend she told Citi-Financial that the account did not belong to her. But She was sent to collections anyway. This happened about 3 years ago.

Ray

---

I think her only recourse is to hire an attorney to fight this. Banks are notorious about ignoring identity theft reports and trying to collect from the victims.

If she reported this to the police or some consumer protection agency, her case would be stronger, since she would have some proof that she disputed this account. Otherwise she will have to try to convince the bank that the account was not opened or used by her.

She can do this if, for example, she lives in New York, and the account was opened with a Florida address and charges were made in Florida. Or she may be able to establish she was not in the locations the charges were made at the time they were made.

This is difficult and given the passage of time, the bank will be even more skeptical.

Have her call her local bar association's Lawyer Referral Service and get the names of some attorneys qualified to handle consumer credit cases. She will be entitled to a free consultation. She should use it to see what her rights are in the state she lives in.

Some states provide more protection than others in this situation and only a local attorney will be able to tell her what her rights are.

She should also contact her state's Attorney General's Office to file a complaint and to see if the Attorney General can provide her with some help.

She can also write to the credit bureaus and ask that her credit report contain a notation that she is disputing these charges through legal channels.

I wish her luck.

  | Top | Questions | Home |