A Happy Ending to a Potential Credit Card Fraud

I have been waiting almost a year for the “other shoe to drop.” It has not. Maybe I am one of the lucky ones for whom the system worked.

On March 11, 1998, I got a message to call Jenny (not her real name) at the fraud division of the Bank of America. When I called back, Jenny said she had a few questions regarding my application for a credit card. What credit card? I had not applied for a credit card. She asked me several questions to make sure she was talking to the right Bryce Thueson and then asked again if I had applied for the American West credit card. When I assured her that I had not applied for any credit card she told me that the application was probably fraudulent.

You can study credit card scams and read about credit card fraud, as I have, but until it is your name on the application, you don’t really understand that sick feeling of being victimized.

Jenny said she became concerned about the application when she did a credit check. The address and employer were different but that could just indicate relocation. However , the date of birth on the application was wrong. Nice catch, Jenny! She said they would turn the application over to their fraud team and I should alert the credit agencies immediately. She even gave me the names and phone numbers of the three national credit bureaus.

I got through to TransUnion on March 11 but had to wait until the morning of March 12 to talk to Experian (TRW) and CSC (Equifax for Texas). I asked them to put a “fraud alert” on my file and to send me a copy of my credit report for verification. They all agreed after I answered several questions to establish my identity.

In the afternoon of March 12, I received a call from NB&A America bank in Wilmington, Del., concerning my application for a Club Tower MasterCard. (They noted the fraud alert on my credit file). No, I had not applied for a MasterCard. Although the banks were reluctant to give me specific information from the applications, through the questions I asked and the ones they asked me, I was able to piece together much of the data when they confirmed information I knew or guessed. Both applications had my name and social security number, but both had the same incorrect address in Seattle and showed that I worked for a Seattle company- in one case as a Director making $240,000 a year. Both applications requested an additional card for Nils Rydbeck. Two down, but how many more to go?

Armed with what I thought was pretty good information – two fraudulent applications for credit cards using the same Seattle street address – I called the Seattle police department and talked to its fraud unit. They refused to take the report. The officer I talked to said only a victim could make a report and I was not (yet) a victim. To quote Shakespeare, that was “the most unkindest cut of all.” After two days on the phone with banks and credit agencies, I was told there was nothing I could do about it. As an “angry almost victim”, that is not what I wanted to hear from the fraud squad. So I did what I suspect many almost-victims (and perhaps many victims) do – I gave up on law enforcement, at least for the time being.

For the next few days, I woke up every morning wondering whether my credit rating was intact or if my “friends” in Seattle had slipped one through the screening process. On March 16 I received a call from Liz (not her real name) at Bankcard Services in Seattle. They were processing my application for an Alaskan Airlines credit card and wanted to check with me because of the security alert on my credit file. No, Liz, I did not apply for an Alaskan Airlines credit card and I did not want Nils Rydbeck to have one either.

While that week was frustrating, the paper war had just begun. The credit reports arrived the next week. (As a precaution, I requested a copy of my wife’s credit reports and added the fraud alert to her files). Two of the agencies had “updated” my files based on the credit card application inquiries to include the Seattle address, employment at Boeing or the GYS Group, etc. The information from the fraudulent applications was now a reportable part of my credit file.

Over the next few days, we went through the six reports line by line. I will spare you the details but the number of errors we found in our credit reports was unbelievable. To be fair, some of them were not too significant such as misspelled spouse name, spelling and number errors of prior addresses, etc. Some mistakes, however, were quite serious: wrong social security number, misspelled name, and wrong birth date.

Also, we were disturbed at the number of companies that had reviewed and/or received at least part of our credit history. Examples of the inquiries were:

• “Inquiry made for prescreen program. Your file was matched against this creditor’s criteria to develop a list of names for a credit offer or service.”
• “Inquiry made for address information only.”
• The companies listed below received your name, address and other limited information about you so they could make a firm offer of credit or insurance.”

We made the corrections to our files and sent them back to the agencies. We also questioned some of the inquiries. By the end of March we received the second batch of credit reports. Most of the changes had been made but no mention was made of our questions about the inquiries. In fact one service (Agency X) had three new “You Credit History Was Reviewed By:” entries – the result of inquiries related to the fraudulent credit card applications. Agency X also informed us that the “fraud alert” would be deleted after 90 days. If we wanted to extend the time we had to forward a written request and include a copy of a telephone bill, which must show our name, address and home phone number. Too bad they were not careful earlier about verifying the information from a credit card application.

We recycled the Agency X report one more time. Somewhere in the middle of the paper storm, we received a very helpful package from the Consumer Assistance Center of Agency A. The package included a Fraud Victim Assistance Questionnaire and specific instructions on how to request a review/correction of our files. They even included contact information for the other two bureaus.

By the end of May, we had the third report from Agency X; it still had the three credit inquiries listed in the credit history review section. We decided we could live with that.

The bad news of this ordeal is it was an angry, frustrating, time-consuming process. The good news is the system worked – Jenny did her job well and the rest of the network responded. Some required more prodding than others, but we eventually got there.

There are several lessons that I learned from this experience and would like to pass on to you, a fraud examiner and a consumer:

1. React as quickly as possible; hours can make a difference.
2. Ask questions; get as much information as you can.
3. Use every resource you can to fight back; credit agencies, consumer assistance centers, creditor fraud units, and (don’t give up on) law enforcement.
4. Finally, remember if you are not monitoring your credit report, no one is.

And one final word – Jenny, wherever you are, bless you!

Bryce C. Thueson, CFE, CPA, is a consultant providing litigation support services in Houston, Texas.