Family Credit Card Fraud / Identity Theft Advice

mcpitman

Sorry to say OP, but you have been stitched up good and proper here.


I would take her to the cleaners if I could, but feel that the problem is too old and too established to go down that path now.

satch291

I would suggest you get hold of your 3 credit files to make sure there is no further debt you are currently unaware of, Have you spoken to the card companies to cancel the cards?

No, this refers to the files managed by the three independent credit ratings agencies

Thanks for the help guys, things are starting to seem a bit less daunting.

I just signed up to the MSE Credit Club, there are no new accounts which I was unaware of, only the existing accounts which I didn't open, plus one I opened myself later to balance transfer some of that debt to a 0% card.

It has also matched me with 90% eligibility for a Tesco 0% (40 months) balance transfer card. If I transferred this debt onto that card, could that make things worse, If I were to try to label this as debt as theft, despite it saving me a lot of money each month in interest?

Candyapple

Yea I think the dream of reporting her to the police and marking the accounts as ID theft are long gone - that ship has sailed. The time to do that was when you first discovered the debts. You would likely be considered as much a suspect as she is, in fact, you may even mess up your life further if the card companies suspected you were both in on it and were now trying to defraud them out of repayments and hit you with a CIFAS marker (no credit or anything for next 6 years and any existing accounts you have elsewhere likely closed too). I mean think about it, you have been making the repayments all this time and now all of a sudden you want to claim ID theft, it doesn't work like that.

Your only solution now is to move any debt you have left onto a 0% card(s) and pay it off until the debt is clear.

As for your ex, well you gave her a free pass so think of the £7k debt she run up as your price of stupidity for a) not dealing with the matter correctly at the time and b) getting back together with her without any further repercussions or debt repayment plan in place.

It could be worse, she could have run up £70k. Or you may not have been able to repay the debt yourself so your credit history would have been trashed. So look on the bright side.

Good luck trying to get a penny back from her - you never had any agreement in place and it's your word against hers. Even if you took her to small claims court, I imagine she is on benefits/low salary so even if by some means you won - she would likely get away with only paying you back something stupid like £1 per month. So keep that in mind before you go throwing more money down the drain on a court claim.

All you can do is chalk this up to experience and get on with your life.

Sncjw

Ignore the score. I would check noddle and clearscore as lenders report to different credit reference agency's


As much as you care for her daughter it shouldn't mean her mother get away with not paying you back and potentially damaging your future.