PUBLISHED JULY 21, 2016
Knowing what to do first can make all the difference
By PENNY FLETCHER
I wish I wasn’t writing this story in the first person, but it’s the best way I can think of to warn – and advise — readers to help keep themselves safe.
You see, this past year my fiancé was a victim of identity theft, and I have recently become a victim of bank card fraud.
It’s one thing if a thug hits you or grabs your purse. In cases like that you call 9-1-1 or yell for help. But being caught up in white collar crime is a totally different experience. And not knowing what to do first can delay repairing the damage and affect everything from your credit to your tax refund.
I mention tax refund first because that’s how my fiancé found out his identity had been stolen.
While being asked questions by the friendly AARP Tax-Aide volunteers at United Community Church who work tirelessly every year to help local elder residents file (relatively simple) returns free of charge, my fiancé was told his return had already been filed. Worse yet, his refund had been mailed and cashed.
The AARP Tax-Aide filed for a refund for him anyway, with explanation, and eventually he received the refund due him. But as time went on, he found it impossible to open a new bank account or get credit.
Seniors Against Crime in Sun City Center directed my fiancé to www.identitytheft.gov, which is a Federal Trade Commission website where you can report the theft and get help. People who don’t have thousands of dollars to spend on lawyers may find this site extremely helpful when doing things on their own.
For starters, it advises the victim to call all companies where the fraud occurred and let them know it wasn’t you who made the charge. Then place a fraud alert on your credit reports. There are three reporting agencies: TransUnion, Equifax and Experian.
After you have notified companies where fraud occurred and placed fraud alerts with the credit-reporting agencies, go back to www.identitytheft.gov/steps and report the identity theft.
Finally, if bills start coming in from new accounts opened in your name, call the fraud department of each business and ask them to close the account.
Now to my story:
Four months after the tax return fraud, I found myself overdrawn by nearly a thousand dollars.
My bank offers “constant credit,” which means if I overdraw my checking account, the bank pays and I can reimburse my account. This works really well for me.
Or, I thought it worked well until I found zero balances on all my accounts at once and realized I hadn’t used my bank card in days.
Faced with zeros on my bank accounts, the first place I went was to the bank, but there was nothing they could do to help me because the “charges” were all still “pending.”
You can cancel the bank card immediately upon your first visit to the bank, but that is all you can do.
A “charge” is “pending” until it moves into your account, which can take one day, or possibly two or three, while you sit wondering how many more “pendings” are going to show up.
The following day, the bank advised me the charges had moved to my account and we could deal with things.
I wanted to file a police report because if you don’t, the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) won’t pay the bank back — and if the bank isn’t going to be reimbursed, it isn’t going to reimburse you.
I was given a total of charges that had gone through and separated what was mine and what was not mine. I took a letter from my banker and set off to file a report with the sheriff’s office.
First, I went to the District 4 office in Ruskin because I knew that was the South County “command center.”
I was wrong. They don’t take bank fraud claims at district offices, only at community substations.
“Where do you live?” the deputy asked.
I told him Riverview and was directed to the substation on Commerce Street in Riverview.
There I was met with a sign that read “Closed Until Further Notice.” I found out later that the person in charge at the substation had retired, and they were in the process of training someone new.
But that day, standing at the closed door of the Riverview station, all I could think of were the checks I had written in good faith that may soon overdraw my account.
So I went to the Gibsonton substation in Twin Oaks Plaza where I was told I had to have an appointment to fill out a fraud report.
I tried the Sun City Center substation. Surely they would have time to file a fraud report for me.
As it turned out, I was told in Sun City Center that I had to have specific forms from the fraud department of the bank before I could file anything. The bank personnel had said those would come later from their main office, after I had filed the police report.
So I needed the police report to get the fraud forms, and I needed the fraud form to get the police report.
Not being one to fear making a whole round of telephone calls to supervisors, HCSO public relations director Debbie Carter quickly got me through to Major Rob Bullara who explained that substation personnel are told to make appointments because people need to have specific forms and paperwork with them to fill out the reports. “This makes it possible to get it all done in one trip,” he said.
So what do you do when you are a victim of white collar crime?
The one thing I learned that could help readers who have any of these things happen to them is “assume nothing.”
Call your bank. Call the sheriff’s office. Use your phone until you have the exact details of what — and how — to report your crime. Doing the right thing at the right time will save you time, gas and aggravation.
This nightmare can happen to anyone, not just people with a lot of money in the bank. In fact, a spokeswoman at the FTC told me on the telephone in March that people prey on seniors, the disabled and those with smaller incomes who are less likely to hire attorneys.
