Identity Theft

nordberg

My mother has become a victim of identity theft. It seems someone, somewhere has taken out a credit card using her details and run up some considerable debt. We only found out about it after receiving threatening letters by a 3rd party debt collection agency who have "bought" the debt from MBNA.

To cut a long story short, we are getting nowhere. MBNA are trying to help but the 3rd part debt collection people (Lowels or something) are being extrmely difficult. My mother has now found out she has been "blacklisted" and looks like her credit rating is down the pan. What started as an annoyance is now a bloody nightmare.

Can anyone offer any advice? Apart from the obvious negative effects of the credit rating, this is now causing considerable emotional stress also.

GreyPilgrim

Don't have anything to offer apart from sympathy mate. I hope it all turns out and whoever did it suffers a long and lingering death. They're scum

C_Ronaldo

i can offer you tips to prevent it from happening again

shred any papers that have any personal details on, keep bills that are 8 months old and shred the rest, i cant think of anything else at the minute

Browntoa

If you have been the victim of a mugging or burglary and personal identification documents have been stolen, there is a risk they could be used by the thief to obtain credit or other products and services fraudulently in your name. For an administration fee of £11.75 (£10 plus £1.75 VAT) CIFAS offers a service, provided on their behalf by Equifax, to protect your name and address from being misused in this way.

http://www.cifas.org.uk/protective_registration.asp

Advice For Victims

You may request a note be added to your credit file to state you have been the victim of identity theft.
http://www.cifas.org.uk/identity_fraud_victim_advice.asp

nicola1982_2

Experian have a victim of fraud team that will deal with this. Get a copy of the credit file from them, ring the consumer helpline and speak to their victims of fraud department. Last I knew the manager of that department was a Mr Cartwright (I think), he and his collegues are very good and will investigate the problem thoroughly.

Tootsie_Roll

OK - the dca will not be interested in resolving a fraud account so don't even bother trying to deal with them, at the most tell them the account is in dispute and tell them to send it back. Make a real nusiance of yourself with MBNA until they get it sorted to your satisfaction. Again the more noise you make the quicker they will want to get rid of you and get it sorted. MBNA are notorious for P1ss1ing about with this sort of thing so don't take no for an answer and if you feel you are not getting satisfaction ask for a Manager and keep going up the chain till you're happy. Ultimately MBNA will have to correct any incorrect credit rating and it should not affect your Mother once sorted.

My wife works in the fraud department for one of the large banks so if you need more information on specifics let me know.

Don't worry, unfortunately this happens all the time and it will be OK in the long run.

holidayqueen

Nordberg get your mum to contact MBNA's fraud dept and adv them re the identity theft. MBNA should then contact CIFAS directly and have her details loaded on their files ( and also pay for it )as they were the company involved in autho the original credit.

This should then prevent any future probs when your mum applies for credit and MBNA's fraud team should then deal with the outside debt coll (stop them pursuing her) and then investigate the current situation regarding the credit card.

You need to clarify the situation re the 'sale of the debt'. Has it been sold on or has it just been passed to a outside debt coll?. If its been 'sold on' sometimes the collector concerned will just write it off because of the problem and the fraud does not get resolved.

So they could end up not pursuing your mum, she would think everythings resolved but its still on her cr/file and the poss fraudster could still use her details again.

nordberg

Big Thanks to all of you

As I understand it, the debt has been sold to Lowell Financial Group who seem to have a pretty godawful reputation. MBNA have said they will sort it but it will take 3 months. Meanwhile, the threatening letters from Lowell continue. Also, a 3 month black mark on her credit rating is not good for her, my father or my father business which all reside at the same address.

LJD1_2

Hiya. Out of interest, do you know how long this had all been going on before you found out about the identify theft? We recently had a credit card company returning forms to us with ALL our details on and it got lost in the post....scary to think what someone could be doing with it!

In_Search_Of_Me

Have you contacted the police? This should be reported & a crime ref no obtained I would suspect plus I would get advice from CAB re liability. My understanding is that credit cards have fraud protection so it should be covered by this. Do you have all details of where funds were spent so that this can be tallied up with where your mother was when funds used (ie she was not where they were etc!). Good luck with this...seems to become increasingly common & I've started shredding stuff...