I briefly owned a house 2,500 miles away and helped send a guy to jail

I was fortunate. A package showed up in the mail full of real estate closing documents. At first I thought it was junk mail, but looked through it anyway. It showed the purchase of a house in Ohio for $500,000. This seemed odd since I live in California and had no interest whatsoever in moving to the Midwest. Upon further examination of the documents, the red flag was when I discovered my actual social security number.

The biggest oddity, one never reconciled, was that my address in California was hand-written after white-out was applied over a typed-in address in Ohio. Someone at the mortgage company actually took the time to send copies of these documents to my real address instead of (or perhaps in addition to) the one provided by the thief. Despite a thorough and at least partially successful police investigation, the person responsible for sending me the documents was never identified. Getting the closing papers quickly rather than learning of this theft later via other means almost certainly and significantly reduced the impact on my personal life, although this was a difficult and time-consuming event nonetheless.

My first step was to call the bank that had already provided the funds. It took a few explanations to finally get to an investigator at the bank who dealt with suspected fraud. When I explained the documents and noted that I hadn’t even been to Ohio within the past ten years, his first response was, “uh oh.” Fortunately, my quick and appropriate action prevented the bank from sending the mortgage to collection with my social security. In the ensuring weeks, I had many conversations with bank officials looking into who actually profited from this transaction.

Meanwhile, I filed papers with the three credit bureaus notifying them of an identity theft and that I was not responsible for any debt incurred within the state of Ohio. I filed a local police report as was advised by those with whom I spoke about this.

All seemed okay, for awhile. However, I checked my credit reports regularly and about a year later discovered that there were two accounts sent to collection, one from the electric company in Columbus, Ohio (South Central Power Co.) and the other from AT&T. Evidently, the thief had used my name and social security number to establish service in Ohio. It seemed particularly bad business that AT&T would allow this since I already had current accounts with them in California. I soon learned that none of these companies is the consumer’s friend. Despite faxing and mailing documentation of the theft and several phone calls, neither South Central Power nor AT&T would remove the credit hits and the credit bureaus refused to remove the dings without the permission of those companies. It literally took more than three years to finally have these items removed from my credit report with no help nor courtesy whatsoever from South Central Power and AT&T. In fact, for this reason I won’t do business again with AT&T having canceled my California accounts.

What perhaps stunned me the most was how easy the thief obtained a half-million dollars and these accounts with my name and social security number. At that time, if you did an internet search for my name with the correct spelling, you would learn I am the only person in America with that name and it would even show a photo (!) of me. The thief was identified as a black male and I am Caucasian. All credit records showed my address and phone number in California (which is probably how the person who sent me the documents found the address) and the bank loaned the money and the other companies established accounts without even the slightest effort to call or write to me at my address and phone number on record, an address that hadn’t changed for more than a decade.

Perhaps the one fortunate part of all this is the suspected thief was caught. Although it took more than one person to victimize me and, evidently, many others, law enforcement found the person they believed to be the chief conspirator. He was put on trial about three years after I discovered the theft and the authorities flew me to Ohio (my first visit in more than a dozen years to that state) to testify in court. Essentially I told the jury that none of the signatures on the documents were mine and that my wife’s name was not the name used on the documents and she looked nothing like the photo provided. The suspect was convicted and sentenced to several years in jail. An investigator from the prosecutors office said they are hoping to bring others involved to trail, although I am not privy to further information.

My one regret was the thief did this in Ohio and in the winter when I had no interest in owning a home in Columbus. The bank explained that until authorities cleared things up (which took months), I actually did own a rather nice house and could have used it if I wanted. I never actually saw the house, although it was a large and nice brand new home in a suburban neighborhood. My (actual) wife and I often expressed the wish the identity theft had taken place in Hawaii. Had that been the case, we would certainly had investigated the property personally!

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It doesn't take much for this to happen to you. See All 3 National Credit Scores & 3 Reports Instantly, Online & Free! Checking your credit doesn't hurt, but having your identity stolen does.

2 Responses to “I briefly owned a house 2,500 miles away and helped send a guy to jail”

1. popurls.com // popular today says:

   June 22, 2009 at 4:41 pm

   popurls.com // popular today…

   story has entered the popular today section on popurls.com…
2. Dan Ballance says:

   June 23, 2009 at 9:10 am

   Great read! Thoroughly enjoyed the post and I’m glad you got your life back in order (albeit three years later).

   Your bit about AT&T has me worried, however, since I just opened an account with them last Friday when I got my new iPhone. Oh boy…