Captain Nemo

I'll give you my horror story. Back in 1993 I was sitting at work when I got a phone call from an auditor at Chase Manhattan. She asked me if I had one of her cards, to which I replied no. She said that they had issued a card to someone in my name, but based on the buying activity, it didn't appear to be me (let that one sink in a little next time you use a credit card somewhere a little risque).

Anyway, she puts a hold on the card and suggests that I call the police. Well the police tell me I need to contact the Postmaster because it was interstate mail fraud (Illinois issued the card to a person in Michigan). Well, the Postmaster tells me that I have to call the Secret Service because it is interstate bank fraud (the guy used the card to get cash). I finally get to talk to an agent at the Secret Service and between him checking records, and me checking local establishments where the guy might have set up an account, we able to determine that the guy had used the original card as collateral to get 24 other cards and rack up $250K in my name. What was great about this whole thing is that all of the cards were issued with my correct name, but in all cases the current address was wrong as was the social security number.

Now, before I go any further, let me explain how fucked up the credit card industry is. For Chase to issue the card, they have to get an application where they key in on the following information. Name, address and social security number. Here's the fucked up part, they only need to do a credit match with one of the big credit agencies (Equifax, etc.) and get a return hit on two of the three. So when they ran the info. they came back with my correct name and an old address (which they accepted as correct). So even though the SS number was wrong, bingo, good to go.

So between the agent, Chase and myself we pieced together what happened. Chase sent out a pre-approved application to an address which was an apartment I had lived in 7 years before. The guy that was currently living there filled it out (incorrectly) and got the card which started the whole thing.

Now a brief interlude into the absurd. I am again at work and the agent calls me to tell me that they picked the guy up and he confessed. However, he said he did it because I was his gay lover and I had thrown him out so he was using my cards as revenge (which somehow makes it a different crime). I actually started laughing when he said they needed to put me in a line up. I was like "besides the fact that this is absolutely absurd, tell me where I need to go". Fortunately, before I had to do this the guy broke down and said it was a lie and he didn't know me.

So, now I have to go testify at his trial, as I did a lot of the leg work (which was a pain because the city this idiot did this in was two hours away from where I currently lived). But testify I did and the guy got 7 years in the federal facilities. So, I am walking out of the courthouse and I tell the agent that I will probably need him to intervene for me with the credit agencies as I'm sure my credit is going to be totally fucked up. Sure enough, the calls start flooding in with people calling me a deadbeat and to pay my bills. I actually was served a summons because this idiot got into a fight with someone at a bar and the bartender had, you guessed it, my name because of the card he used to settle his tab.

Anyway, long story short, even with the local television doing a news report on me because of the circus like nature of the whole thing, my credit was shot for close to 5 years. When my first wife and I bought a new house, my father-in-law actually had to buy it because I couldn't get credit.

Fortunately, everything is back to normal, but Christ what a headache that was. And the scariest thing is that even though the common rule of the thumb is to always shred this type of mail, I never got it in the first place.

But still, shred everything.