Today i received a letter from a debt collector and there was unpaid bill worth $1200 from Mastercard! but the thing is I've never apply for a mastercard credit card before so i got on the phone and called them up. i talked to their head supervisor and he told me to file a police report but i dont know what's gonna happen after that. why would i pay something that i have never use it right? is there anyone here that had been in my situation before?? can someone give me some ideas how to take care of this shit! **** **** **** im so pissed right now!
I have, to date, only dealt with fraudulent CC charges, not fraudulent accounts, but the FTC site has information on identity theft. See these sites, or your state AG's site: www.ftc.gov http://www.privacyrights.org/ http://www.identitytheft.org/ First, immediately notify the 3 CRAs that you have had an id theft resulting in a fraudulent account opened in your name. They will place a fraud alert on all 3 of your reports, to notify any new creditors considering opening an account that they should verify your identity by calling you at the phone number you specify. If you notify one, they are supposed to notify the others, but you might want to place the first fraud alert on-line, or by phone, for speed, and send CRRR letters to all three as follow up. This also gives you the right to pull a free report from each, to see what fraudulent account activity is showing. Second, since this is your first contact from them on this account, you will also want to send a letter disputing the debt, and requesting validation, to preserve your rights under FDCPA. You want to send this timely, in less than 30 days from their letter, in order to block further collection and give you stronger rights to sue should they continue collection without forwarding validation. Since you never opened this account, nothing they forward will convince you otherwise, but you may still want whatever validation they obtained from the original creditor, to determine what you need to do to deal with the id theft and minimize your risk of further theft. Third, file an id theft complaint with your local police, and obtain a copy of the police report, so you can both block continued collection of this account from you, or sale to another debt collector, and to block any attempts to put any information related to this account on your credit reports. You can then send a copy of the police report, a copy of a fraud affidavit, with your letter to CRAs or CAs to notify them the account is fraudulent. They are then required under FACTA to remove or cease collection of the fraudulent account. Send ALL communications via CRRR, so you have a record proving when you sent it, and when they received it, in case you have to sue them. Keep copies of everything you send in your files, stapled to the Certified, and Return Recepts. What information was provided, either in the letter, or by the debt collector, regarding the account? Did they provide the original CC company name, the MC account number, when opened, or any other information, such as any identification information on whoever opened the account, including name variations, billing address, etc? What was the CC company that opened the account? What CA is collecting on this?
The orignal creditor is HSBC card services, inc. the letter says, FFPM Carmel Holding I, LLC has purchased the account indicated above. please contact this office upon receipt of this letter. We would like to provide an oppurtunity to you to take care of this matter. please call blah blah blah To assure that your inquiries are handled promptly, courteously and accurately, some of the telephone calls between first financial asset management, inc. employees and our customers are monitored, without notice to the customer or the employee, by supervisory or management personnel. we do not make a recording of any call that is monitored.
Send a DV letter via the US Mails using CMRRR. Samples are in the sample letter section of this page. The whole point in the laws governing debt validation is to make the collector prove the debt is valid, they have a legal right to collect, the amounts are correct, etc. If it turns out to be ID theft you can also take that route, but choosing not to send a DV letter in response seems unwise. Nothing in the DV letter is contradictory with a later claim of ID theft.
I am a newbie on here,but in my opinion I think the id theft route offers a good final solution to this account as opposed to a dv letter. The Facta provisions of the Fcra have given id theft victims some good procedures and protection from damages caused by theft and fraudulent accounts.
Although filing an id theft complaint, and sending copies to the CRAs, may be what ultimately gets fraudulent accounts removed, you would be a fool to limit your actions to this path alone if you can also send a timely FDCPA dispute and validation request to block further collection activity. You cannot know at this time how this will play out, how long it will take, or how much damage OCs or CAs dealing with this fraudulent account will do to YOU before you finally get it resolved. It is to your advantage to preserve any legal advantage you can get that might allow you to hold parties damaging you liable for their damage. Otherwise, your opponents will delay and delay, hoping they can get you to pay anyway, while you pay higher interest, and when you are about to sue, they just fix it, walk away, and claim you can't prove your interest costs were do to anything they did. You lose even if you get it fixed. Or you sue, incur the costs of hiring an attorney, they settle and fix it, and you are still out cash if you can't make them pay damages and your attorney fees.
