A few days ago, a past client of mine contacted me about a major scam; she has been victim of attempted identity theft. Luckily, my client purchased credit monitoring, she was notified immediately about the change in her employment information and new credit inquiries that have been established onto her credit report. We will identify my client as “CG”; this is “CG’s” story:
“On March 28, 2012 I received a call from a man claiming to be able to have the interest rates lowered on all of my credit cards with balances. I told him that I didn’t normally carry balances on my cards and he said that he could see I had balances on two of my Citi Bank cards. He kept me on the phone for quite some time. I was preoccupied putting on my make-up at the time so I set the phone down and spoke with him on the speaker phone.
The first call came in at 11:08 AM Wednesday March 28, 2012 from 407-***-****. He wanted me to have all of my credit cards in my hand while we were talking. He wanted all the customer service numbers for each credit card so he could call and negotiate the interest rate on my behalf so I relented and got the cards. I gave him the toll free numbers that related to each credit card number. He asked if he could call me back in about ten minutes and when I agreed we ended the conversation.
At 12:46 PM, Wednesday March 28, 2012 I received another call from the same gentleman. I do not recall his name and I did not write it down. He said he was with Citi Corp which I interpreted as Citi Bank. He made calls to several of the customer service reps for my Citi Bank cards with me on the line and after receiving my permission to speak with them on my behalf was told my cards already carried 0% interest until well into 2013. He repeated that he could only save me interest on cards that I carried a balance on. He called Chase while I was on the line and determined that I did have a new charge of $***.0* but also found that my interest rate was currently 0%.
He then said he was going to work on something regarding my card with a balance due and he would call me back. This time he called from phone number 301-***-**** at 6:36pm. I thought that was odd because I was still interpreting Citi Corp as Citi Bank which I know is in NYC. He started talking to me about a card he could open for me that would have 0% interest through 2013 but it had a transfer fee of 3%. I was tired of him and the conversation and just told him I wasn’t interested in any of it and ended the call.
The next day my Zendough alerting service with Trans Union sent me an ID Theft alert and a credit report that indicated someone had applied for credit using my info with Discover Card on 3/28/12 and 3/29/12 and HSBC Credit on 3/29/12 and Capital One on 3/29/12 and Barclays Bank which handles my M/C.”
Safeguarding Your Credit
We advise clients to enroll with Experian or Equifax for credit monitoring during and after their credit restoration process. It’s worth the small investment to enroll in Identity Theft Protection and Credit Monitoring. We have listed some excellent Identity Theft Protection companies to help you monitor and protect your credit each month:
Steps to Recover after an Attempted Identity Theft and Identity Theft
- Make a police report
- Call 800.680.7289 Transunion Fraud Division
- Call 800.525.6285 Equifax Fraud Division
- Call 888.397.3742 Experian Fraud Division
- Call National Fraud Information Center at 800.876.7060 if it involved a business scam, like this scammer who impersonated himself as a CITI Corp representative
- File a complaint with the FTC or call 877.438.4338
- If there were attempts of unauthorized credit applications that were submitted online or if you have received an email from a phony debt settlement company like this incident, file a complaint with IC3.gov
Remember your credit is your asset for life!
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