My Identity Theft Story

Submitted by Philip G. on Friday, 10/10/2008 – 8:17pm.

Last year in late November I was the victim of identity theft, my SS#, DOB, Mother maiden name, Discover Card number and security check were comprised and used to change address information at Discover Card’s web site.

I was called in early December from Discover Card fraud asking me if I had made some purchases (at a major computer manufacturer) and had I recently changed my address at their web site. The answer to both was no. I was informed that someone had made purchases using my account and changed the mailing information on my account at their web site. In order to do this the individual had to have had the above information to change the password at Discover.

Two ways this could have happened I had applied for a store Credit Card (national chain) using my Discover Card as a credit reference. Or the Saturday before the incident I tried to log into the Discover web site and could not because my password did not work. I didn’t think anything of it since it seems at different sights you cannot use the same characters to create a password. So I went through their checks to change it, this required the above information.

So my current account was closed, and a new one opened for me. I was informed there would be an investigation as to what happened. I called back after a couple days only to find the account had not been given to a specialist yet. In the mean time I provided the individual with all the information I had including; order numbers, rep I talked with from the computer manufacturer, phone of their fraud rep etc. and what I thought could have happened.

In the mean time I found out from a rep we could place alerts with the 3 major credit-monitoring services. We also checked with any other financial account if anything had happened with them. I established a account monitoring with one of the credit services in case this info was used to get a new card of some type. I filed reports with the local police and the FTC.

I felt I did as much as I could and left the investigation to the pros, sure. This week (1/2/2006) I got a letter from Discover saying they were closing the case because the old account was closed a new account was opened and financial loss had been recovered.

Short version; they got their money back and don’t care that somebody stole my personal information. When I called them and questioned the rep and her supervisor, I was informed any further investigation would have to be done by my local police agency.

Why is there identity theft, because all this credit card company cared about was recovering their funds. They didn’t pursue any of the leads I gave them; they didn’t contact the other manufacturer or my local police and try to resolve the bigger issue. They didn’t want to find the person who did this. They just wanted their money back.

If my account information had been changed weren’t they able to follow up on it. They had the order number and reps name from the computer manufacture but didn’t follow up on it. They didn’t contact my local police even when they were provided with the case report and officers name. It was like it was a dead end, they got their money back and that was all they cared about. We used to use their card as our first choice, but as I told them it just became our last choice.