fraudulent use of address

hagen_2

dear all,

we moved into a new house in may 2004, three weeks ago a flood of credit card and other credit account statements dropped onto the mat. all were addressed to the previous owners and all were overdue, over the limit etc.

it appears they had their mail re-directed and continued to use our address for credit purposes, b******s, before moving to spain.we contacted the various companies,who couldn't give us any information about what they were up to and said they would deal with it!

our main concern is having fraudulent activity linked with this address, experian, the credit reference agency said that bad debt is linked with a persons name and not with a particular address, i dont believe that especially as we've been living at the address while the fraud has been taking place,

does anybody have any suggestions as to how to get this checked out?

thanks for your help

rob

Paul_Varjak

Your assumption about debt being linked to your address would have been true a few years ago. But I think now they can make no such link unless that person is 'financially connected' to you.

I would suggest getting hold of a copy of your credit reports from Experian and Equifax just to make sure that no financial link has been made. If there is a 'financial link' noted you can ask them to remove that link.

J_P_S

i agree, get hold of copies of the credit files for your name and address and see what is listed.

you can sign a form of disasociation i think its called to separate yourself from them if needed.

unfortunately there is nothing to stop people doing these things, although giving a false adress is a criminal offence.

NigeWick

J_P_S wrote:

giving a false adress is a criminal offence.

Depends on the purpose of the false address and who one gives it to. Giving a false address to a sales person ringing you at random would be no problem. Giving a false name and address when stopped by a police officer could be perverting the course of justice with a maximum (though unlikely) tariff of life imprisonment.

Hagen,
>>> our main concern is having fraudulent activity linked with this address <<<

How do you know the activity is fraudulent, and not just exceedingly poor money management?

Nigel.

gruntfutick

We moved into a new house 9 months ago - rented. two years ago the previous tenant was asked to leave. since then we have had various letters addressed to her, returned them to the post office only to have them sent back to us again. We have no idea where she went and the landlord is not sure either as she took off owing him money. Eventually we resorted to opening some of the mail in order to ring up the people sending it to let them know she no longer lived here. We have continued to receive demands for money from various people addressed to her and have attempted to return them to the senders. We have now resorted to throwing mail into the bin. However we received a call today from Quick Fit at 9.00 at night looking for this person who had apparently given our telephone number (we took over the old telephone number from the premises) and this address as being her contact. We are now feeling that we cannot be secure but as we do not know where she is and have no forwarding address do not know how to bring this matter to an end so that we can ensure that we are no longer bothered. Can the police do anything to trace her and is she acting illegally?

jenniewb

There was something on the BBC watchdog about this earlier this week-(19th October) if you have the i-player, you can rewatch it.