How I Experienced Cases of Identity Theft Twice

by Clarence
(Houston TX)

The first time that I experienced identity theft was when I went to the bank to withdraw money and found out that my money was lower than the previous amount that I had left. I called my wife immediately to ask her whether she had withdrawn some money without telling me, or if she had made a purchase with my money and she informed me that she had not.


I then checked my e-mail address so that I could have my problem solved. I wondered what went wrong when I realized that my e-mail was not working. I started to investigate what was wrong and I realized that the thief was making his purchases online using the money in my PayPal account. The thief had even changed the password to my e-mail addresses! He was purchasing his sporting equipment outside the U.S using my name to his sellers, and one of them had questioned the buyer on his products in the shop when they realized that the account is of a person currently residing in the United States.


The next step that I took was to call upon the police for help, but they did not help because this had taken place outside the United States. I called upon PayPal for help and my account was closed for further investigation.


The second time that I found myself in an identity theft case was when someone used my name mistakenly when opening his account. When I realized about this issue, I went to check my account balances and credit history. I was shocked when I found that my credit history showed that I had three credit cards, five cars and two houses, one in New York and the other one in Pennsylvania. The identity thief had bought all these on credit. I was a victim of the identity theft, and I did not know whether this person was able to pay all these things.


I took the step of calling upon the police, and they assisted me in filing a report that enabled me to solve the problem.