Merry Christmas Oklahoma

My story of identity theft does have a happy ending but not before I used up every single minute on my cell phone plan trying to fix the situation which got fixed only after I had to do without my whole Christmas vacation to ‘accomodate’ a thief.

The day before Christmas in 2002, I was making last minute purchases in a department store. One of the purchases was a really cute necklace I knew my mom would love and with the double coupon I was about to use the necklace, wrapping and all would end up costing under 20 dollars. I was flying out early the next morning to join my family up north and with carols playing in the department store and my hand on the final present I needed to buy I was really getting into the Christmas spirit. At about 7pm I decided I had browsed enough and moved to the register to make my purchase. Little did I know that this single, under 20 dollar purchase would set off a chain of events that would leave me without money for several days and no way to get to my family on Christmas. I handed the lady my debit card and the fun began.

Total bill $17.50. Denied. Try again please. Denied and Call Cardholder Bank. I called the bank – Christmas Eve at 7:15pm – closed. Now what. The woman was still holding onto my card and someone from security walked up. A conversation ensued about whether or not this was my card! I ended up walking out of the store without my card; my only means of getting cash and thinking that if $17.50 was denied then where was my $4,000 paycheck from the day before and my $2,500 Christmas bonus!? I couldn’t even write a check. Oh well, I thought, I’ll just go home tomorrow and be with my family and they’ll lend me money until I can talk to the bank.
Christmas day arrived and I just wanted to get to the airport. I couldn’t call the bank until the day after Christmas so I headed for the airport early. Thankfully the lines were short and as I approached the counter the lady told me that they weren’t printing tickets, that all boarding passes were being printed from the center kiosks. I plugged in my confirmation number and the machine asked for the card with which I had purchased the ticket – you guessed it – the same card that I had to leave at the department store! I went to the counter and there was nothing they could do. Their counter machines were updating and there would be no printing for hours. I went home. No Christmas tree, no presents, no festive food, no company, no flight to see family, no phone calls from friends, no money – I had $10 in cash and I figured I’d better hang on to it.

The next day was the 26th, a very very memorable day. I called the bank and they said both my checking and savings were overdrawn but that the bank had no flags on my accounts. I decided to go into the bank and have a look at these empty accounts that should have had more than $10,000 between them. They showed that “I”, “myself” had purchased large amounts of home electrical power in Oklahoma, that “I” had put a cash down payment on a car(!) and “I” had bought a lot of clothes – in “person” no less.

Once the trail of purchases unraveled, it was a more than $10,000 shopping spree that someone who was actually signing my name and producing “ID” was enjoying!

How did it happen? Thanks to some detective work on my part and on the part of the fraud division at the bank we were able to piece together the story. When I paid my phone bill to a major carrier in October and November I happened, because of the area of the country I called from, get processed by the same customer service person from Oklahoma who took my information and got a fake ID made with my information and their picture on it! They cleaned out my bank account, I ended up with two items placed on my credit rating and they even bought a car!

The fallout took almost 2 years to straighten out. I had to prove my identity to my own bank more than once! Returning the car and reversing the loan that was made in my name was the hardest thing to do – the loan and car companies actually didn’t care about me or my credit so they just wanted to repossess the car and let it put a black mark on my credit! I got a new bank account, a new debit card which I didn’t want to use for about 2 months(!), a hard time buying a car after that, and it was expensive to get a lawyer to get all that stuff off my credit and a “remarked” credit rating which means my lawyer wrote a letter on my behalf detailing what happened. The bank tried to get me an airline ticket to replace the round trip I lost at Christmas but that was probably wishful thinking. The airline was gracious though and gave me the miles instead of a replacement ticket. So I lost Christmas, about $2,000 and some time and shed a few tears – mostly out of sadness at my ruined Christmas and frustration at having to do things like prove who I was to my own bank! All in all a pretty traumatic but fascinating experience – we found out that someone from a branch of my bank in Oklahoma actually helped the person who stole my ID and money! I guess it pays for criminals to know each other.

Advice? Stay calm. Your bank will put the money back in a matter of hours until the dispute is resolved (if they don’t back you switch banks NOW!)If you’re a woman don’t cry and if a man don’t yell – neither is productive. Practically speaking, don’t give account information over the phone – ever. That’s it, my best advice. Only buy from or do business with companies that have secure websites. My situation was a freak chain of events but it was set off by me being too friendly and trusting on the phone when a customer service person asked too many questions (to fill in information blanks so he could start the fraud chain) I should have hung up. Work with the bank and let them do their job. I was probably in the way trying to get some of my own answers. Finally the best piece of advice: don’t hook your bank accounts together as in attaching your savings to your checking. I would have at least had some money left in savings if I didn’t have the automatic overdraft turned on.

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