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Advice regarding Fraudulent activity - effect on credit rating

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Long story short, my mother moved house about December 2017 and recently we have been made aware that there has been some fraudulent activity in her name.


1. Argos store card - which Argos did pick up and managed to make contact before approving and resolved it before any money was involved. Said they would place my mums name on a database that identified people that have been victims of fraud / attempted fraud.


2. O2 Mobile contract - Appears someone signed up for a contact but never paid a penny for it. We have only just found this out and it also appears that the debt was sold on to a 3rd part recovery company.


Regarding point 2, I have contacted O2 about this on my mothers behalf and they have since contacted me via text message to say that they have now closed the account / record following review. They have also said to contact Experian for advise to prevent any future fraud.


So does that mean that my mother does not need to worry about it now? What of the debt that has been sold to a 3rd party, is that now cancelled?


I am looking to also run a credit check on my mother, to see if anything else has been applied for under her name, so as to make sure that this does not happen again.


Any further advise on next steps?
Date of Update – 08/04/19
Goal 1 – Reduce Mortgage - £120k/£120k = 100%:j
Goal 2 – Stupid Fun Car Fund - £11000/£30,000
Goal 3 – Savings – Rainy Day - £10000/£10,000
Goal 4 - Daughter Fund - Target £100/mth = £1444
:j:j:j

Comments

  • DCFC79
    DCFC79 Posts: 40,641 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    edited 8 April 2019 at 10:38AM
    Credit score - not seen by anyone except your mum/you.

    Credit history is what lenders etc see.


    Check experian but also get her to sign up to Equifax (clearscore) and Call credit/Transunion (Noddle).
    Free options in brackets. Check all 3 as lenders might use just 1 agency or 2 or all 3.
  • phillw
    phillw Posts: 5,665 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    edited 8 April 2019 at 10:49AM
    DCFC79 wrote: »
    Credit score - not seen by anyone except your mum/you.

    Credit history is what lenders etc see.

    Which is as always pretty unhelpful as they will see the things that affect the credit score.

    Of course each lender is different and some won't care about markers that someone is a target for fraud, but some will.

    You can also ask for a CIFAS marker to be placed on your account which will make it harder for anyone (including yourself) to get credit in the future.

    The advice you require depends on what your requirements are.
  • Gurj247
    Gurj247 Posts: 148 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 100 Posts Name Dropper
    DCFC79 wrote: »
    Credit score - not seen by anyone except your mum/you.

    Credit history is what lenders etc see.


    Check experian but also get her to sign up to Equifax (clearscore) and Call credit/Transunion (Noddle).
    Free options in brackets. Check all 3 as lenders might use just 1 agency or 2 or all 3.


    Thanks, will check them all out and run them this week at some point with my mother.
    phillw wrote: »
    Which is as always pretty unhelpful as they will see the things that affect the credit score.

    Of course each lender is different and some won't care about markers that someone is a target for fraud, but some will.

    You can also ask for a CIFAS marker to be placed on your account which will make it harder for anyone (including yourself) to get credit in the future.

    The advice you require depends on what your requirements are.

    Main thing I want is to make sure there is no further stuff on her credit file so to speak, if there is we can then make contact with the relevant companies to make sure its flagged as fraud and then getting my mothers record cleared so if she does want to apply for anything in the future then it should be straight forward.


    if a CIFAS is placed on her account, is it straightforward to take off too if needed?
    Date of Update – 08/04/19
    Goal 1 – Reduce Mortgage - £120k/£120k = 100%:j
    Goal 2 – Stupid Fun Car Fund - £11000/£30,000
    Goal 3 – Savings – Rainy Day - £10000/£10,000
    Goal 4 - Daughter Fund - Target £100/mth = £1444
    :j:j:j
  • phillw
    phillw Posts: 5,665 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    edited 8 April 2019 at 11:11AM
    Gurj247 wrote: »
    if a CIFAS is placed on her account, is it straightforward to take off too if needed?

    If they've already added a CIFAS Victim of Impersonation then paying for a CIFAS Protective Registration right now may be a bit pointless. Technically you shouldn't need to remove it either, both of them should just trigger extra ID checks. However I'm not sure how that works in all situations in practise.

    https://www.cifas.org.uk/services/identity-protection/protective-registration
    https://www.cifas.org.uk/services/identity-protection/victim-of-impersonation

    The victim of impersonation only lasts for 13 months, while a protective registration lasts for 24 months.

    I don't know if you can remove the protective registration early, but I doubt you can remove the victim of impersonation as it's factually correct.
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