Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
My name is Susanne and I’m a victim of identity theft.
I was at home and got a phone call from a gentleman in another state asking if I had
sent him a check for 25 hundred dollars. I said no I hadn’t, I didn’t know him. He
said he thought not, that’s why he called me. He had one of my checks with my name forged
on it.
I then called the bank and stopped payment on all my accounts. Within the next day or
so I received calls from New Jersey, Louisiana, Kansas, and Texas, all people that had my
checks with my name on them uh that the bank did not honor. I then, uh found out that these
same people had tried to access my stock accounts, my business account.
I also was called by Visa, because people were charging my Visa account. All of my accounts
actually. My Mastercard, my Visa, so they had access to everything in my life which
was a total nightmare.
Ultimately I had to cancel every account that I had, change all of my passwords, change
all of my numbers, change everything on my computer.
I think it was two things that happened.
It seemed to me at the time that I was missing a book of checks. But I thought, maybe I wrote
them out of turn, maybe I threw them away by mistake, I didn’t think too much of it.
It was that book of checks. Someone took that book out of the 8 checkbooks they send me,
and kept it. And forged my name on the bottom of these 30 checks.
The second thing was the bank in which I bank, whoever was looking at my cancelled checks,
had to be in cahoots.
They were a pretty good copy of my signature, which is why I think they had to have someone
who was looking at my cancelled checks working with them.
I felt violated. I felt angry. I felt frustrated.
I mean it’s really terrible that someone can get into your personal life in such a
way, and and really take all your finances.
It’s almost like being in a car accident, it just takes a while until your equilibrium
returns and you begin to feel confident again about what you’re doing.
I just think I’m more careful all the way around. Then I was. I’m more aware. I'm
looking more into these things. I’m more careful I write my checks I try not to write
as many checks.
It’s very creepy. You just feel that someone’s watching you, that you don’t know about
it. It’s like walking down a dark street in the middle of the night, and there’s
nobody there, but you have the sense that somebody’s there. That’s what it feels
like.