Stolen Identity I
Several years ago I was shocked to have received a judgment order against me for failure to pay my credit card debt. I was confused because at that point I was in prison well over a decade and I certainly didn’t have any credit cards. I immediately wrote a letter to the bank listed on the lawsuit to notify them that they have the wrong person and to let them know where I’ve been lately. They were cordial enough when I received a reply from one of their attorneys apologizing to me for the situation and telling me that they would be removing the error from my credit report. This lead me to think, “what else could be on my credit report?”, so, with the assistance of a friend of mine named Cliff who is well versed in this area, I sent out requests for my credit report from the top three credit reporting agencies, Equifax, Trans Union, and Experian. I had no idea at the time that I would be facing a long and arduous trek to clear things up.
After I received two of my three credit reports a few weeks later, I found many credit accounts opened in my name as well as a few more judgments against me. I proceeded to file disputes with these agencies and wrote letters to the banks explaining my situation. Based on my prior experience and my obvious incarcerated status I thought this whole thing would be cleared in a matter of weeks. Boy was I mistaken! It wound up taking scores of letters, emails, phone calls, countless hours of legal research, three civil lawsuits, and years of my life to clear this debacle up. There was so much involved but what really gets me was the complete lack of common sense by all those involved including those well educated attorneys fighting me. I mean the fact that I’m in Federal prison is most likely one of the easiest things to confirm. Not only that but all of my communication both incoming and outgoing from prison is either monitored, recorded, or both. I didn’t believe when one bank after the next kept “confirming” that the said disputed accounts were accurate and mine. REALLY?! All they had to do was look at the statements and see where and when these purchases were taking place. All of these accounts were opened many years into my incarceration and many of these charges were being made in brick-and-mortar stores, so it was absolutely and physically impossible for it to have been me.
The amount of hours put into these so-called investigations and the opposition to my lawsuits including the billing of the many attorneys and law firms that were involved meets or far exceeds the very charges that I was disputing. It makes me wonder, who are these attorneys really working for? Are they working for their client of for their own wallet; or are they just another cog in the wheel of this vast capitalistic society? Why would these agencies fight me on what’s most obviously identity theft? I don’t have the answers to these questions but I do know that it took me years of work and stress to clear something up that I was the victim of. I can only imagine how much more difficult it would be for people not in the know and/or living their busy lives with jobs and families on the outside.
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