By now you’ve contacted your local law enforcement and the FTC and have the proper documentation in hand to show that you’ve been a victim of identity theft. You’ve notified one of the major credit bureaus, who has in turn notified the other two.
You’ve been diligent about logging every conversation, along with its date and time, and you’ve kept a careful record of every expense associated with reclaiming your own identity.
You’re daydreaming about what you’d like to do to the person who caused you all this grief, but that won’t help. You need to keep a clear head and keep working on putting everything back to rights.
One of the first things you did when you discovered the identity theft was pull your credit report. Now do it again, because more information may have come in since the last report.
Examine it again for new entries, and if you find some, contact the credit bureau again and let them know of the new fraudulent accounts or charges.
If either the first or second report showed new accounts opened in your name, the next step is to contact each of those creditors and do the following:
• Notify each creditor of the identity theft and get the address where you need to send the fraud affidavit.
• Ask the creditor to send you any application that has been made in your name
• Ask to have the account closed and flagged with a fraud alert
If the thief has been using your credit cards, you need to notify the credit card issuers immediately and have those cards cancelled. They’ll issue new cards, with new numbers. Check to make sure that the address and e-mail address in their database is correct, so they don’t just send your new cards to the thief! Of course let them know which charges on your account are fraudulent, and of course note all of these conversations in detail in your log.
If the identity thief has written checks in your name…
• Call your local police and file another report
• Call your bank and close the account
• Get the proper address to send a copy of the police report
• Ask for a refund of monies fraudulently withdrawn
• And of course, carefully record each of these steps in your log
Identity theft costs millions each year, both in money and time loss. It’s a rude and devastating intrusion into your life. But if you take the steps we’ve outlined, you’ll get through it with the least amount of stress.
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