Identity theft

KellyAC

I’m hoping someone may be able to give advice or has experience of this and knows what we need to do at this point because I’m desperate. This may not be the right place for it but I don’t know where else to go. My partners identity has been stolen and is being used to open businesses in his name, making him director, secretary and person with significant control. Each time it happens we have to contact action fraud to get a crime number and complete forms on Companies House to tell them that this has been done without his consent. We apparently can’t have the person with significant control removed without a court order and have been told to get our own legal advice on that (who knows how much this will cost?!) We’ve been told by Companies House that anyone can do this in his name due to current legislation and basically there’s nothing they can do about it. It keeps happening! Not to mention the letters also telling us that bank accounts have been opened or applications have been made for credit. We’ve put a stop to that side of things so anyone who tries to open an account will be rejected eventually when they do the credit check (including my partner who now also gets rejected for things as a result)
Does anyone know of anything we can do to put a stop to all of this? It’s so frustrating getting letters to our address with new businesses that he’s never opened! 

[Deleted User]

Have you both looked at his credit file, what have you learned there ?
It will provide information that may be useful.

MalMonroe

Has it been reported to the police?
To Action Fraud?
To the three main credit report agencies? (Experian, Equifax, TransUnion)?

And have you contacted CIFAS?  Information in this link to ICO - https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/identity-theft/

Scroll down to where it says "What can I do if I'm the victim of identity theft?"

"Contact CIFAS (the UK’s Fraud Prevention Service) to apply for protective registration. Once you have registered you should be aware that CIFAS members will carry out extra checks to see when anyone, including you, applies for a financial service, such as a loan, using your address."

CIFAS link here - https://www.cifas.org.uk/

I do hope that some of this information is helpful, it's a terrible situation for your partner to be in. 

Golfhotel

Unfortunately nothing can prevent damage to your credit file now, but this is not the end of the world

the main thing is that you don’t lose any money

what do the police say?

glennevis

Going forward, to put a stop to the recurrence of these events maybe MyPAS (free) could be the answer

https://theantisocialengineer.com/MyPAS/

KellyAC

[Deleted User] said:

Have you both looked at his credit file, what have you learned there ?
It will provide information that may be useful.

We have. It’s only shown us when credit checks have been run and by who. A couple of banks had run credit checks but we hadn’t received any correspondence from them so we phoned them straight away to make sure they knew it wasn’t him and closed any accounts. 

KellyAC

MalMonroe said:

Has it been reported to the police?
To Action Fraud?
To the three main credit report agencies? (Experian, Equifax, TransUnion)?

And have you contacted CIFAS?  Information in this link to ICO - https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/identity-theft/

Scroll down to where it says "What can I do if I'm the victim of identity theft?"

"Contact CIFAS (the UK’s Fraud Prevention Service) to apply for protective registration. Once you have registered you should be aware that CIFAS members will carry out extra checks to see when anyone, including you, applies for a financial service, such as a loan, using your address."

CIFAS link here - https://www.cifas.org.uk/

I do hope that some of this information is helpful, it's a terrible situation for your partner to be in. 

The Police just say to report it to action fraud. We’ve reported each and every one to action fraud. We haven’t gone to the main credit agencies, I didn’t know you could do that. I’ll tell my partner to look into this. He’s also going to look into CIFAS and whether this extra protection you can pay for would be beneficial for him. Thank you! 

KellyAC

glennevis said:

Going forward, to put a stop to the recurrence of these events maybe MyPAS (free) could be the answer

https://theantisocialengineer.com/MyPAS/

Thank you! I’ve forwarded this onto my partner to look at

elsien

The problem is that it’s not part of Action Fraud’s remit to investigate anything. They can oversee the bigger picture and what types of frauds are becoming more prevalent but they’re not actually going to do anything themselves that will help your individual situation other than send a crime report back to the police to investigate if there’s enough evidence. There is, however, no obligation on the police to do much with the report that they send. 

So I would suggest going back to the police,  maybe at a slightly higher level and asking them directly what if anything they are planning to do about your specific case. You might find this useful for an Action Fraud overview. 

https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/faq#what-happens-to-my-report-once-has-it-been-made-to-action-fraud