The best laid plans of mice and men…
May 30th, 2008Today was supposed to be a great day. I planned to work from home, get tons of work done in the morning and then maybe slack off (just a little) in the afternoon. But of course, it just wasn’t gonna work out that way. I woke up at about 8:30 am to a call from Dad. That doesn’t happen very often and it really was getting to be a bit late so I answered.
Dad told me he had a call from a company called “The Windsor Group” about some alleged fraud using my social security number. They left a number and wanted me to call back. I did some research on the internet and there wasn’t a ton to be found. But everything I did find sounded a bit shady. So I called them back but was prepared for it to be a big scam. I blocked my number (using *67) too so that they would not be able to contact me.
Unfortunately, they were as shady as they seemed. They told me someone named Anita Jones had bought a 2006 Lexus using my social security number and they just needed to verify that I was not her and did not know her. They wanted me to give them my SSN and to talk to Chase Bank with them. I told them I don’t do business over the phone and that they should not be harassing my father to get to me. They got really rude and yelled at me asking why I had a problem with them. I told them it was all over the internet that their business practices were suspicious. The guy said “Who? Who said that?” I told him I was not going to give any information over the phone and he screamed “Are you serious?!” so I told him the conversation was over and I hung up the phone.
I then got a copy of my Credit Report from Experian and saw that there was no suspicious activity or accounts OTHER than the fact that the Windsor Group had requested a credit check on me 2 days ago.
Then Dad called me back to say that someone named Willie Diggins supposedly from Chase Auto Loans had also called him and left a number. The number was different from Windsor but the extension was similar so Dad thought maybe it was a big hoax. But, since I do have a Chase credit card, I called them using their regular customer service number to see if they had any record of an account with my SSN but not my name. They did not and told me to just tell them “you’ve got the wrong guy.”
So, I decided to call this Willie Diggins and tell him to stop calling my father and that I was going to report them to FTC if they didn’t stop harassing him. It was Chase Auto Loans that answered and this time it seemed to be legitimate. His name was Ed. He told me it was true that they had a case under Anita Jones and that when they checked her original loan application it came up with my SSN. He didn’t know if it was intentional fraud or a typo. He said they would be contacting the dealership to tell them that they had approved her loan based on the wrong SSN and all they were looking for was for me to sign a Fraud Affidavit stating that I didn’t know her, was never at that dealership, never drove the car, etc. etc. etc. He already had all my information from my credit report — I didn’t have to tell him my SSN or address. He said they would send it in the mail so I agreed to do it.
I asked him how this could happen since they should have caught it before the loan was approved in the first place. I mean when they did the credit check shouldn’t it have been a red flag that the name Aimee Wales came up instead of Anita Jones? He didn’t explain but he said not necessarily. Idiots. They deserve to lose the money on this car if that’s the way they do business. But I swear if this messes with my credit…they will be very sorry.
So the last thing I’ll say is just warn everyone of a couple of things. Windsor seems to be a legitimate collection agency with aggressive tactics. They will call anyone they can get a hold of who is remotely related to the actual person they are looking for. If anyone else gets a call about me from them just ignore it. They have been instructed not to call ANYONE in my family by Chase Auto Loans and me and Dad. They seem to have better luck getting home phone numbers than mobile numbers so some of us are safe.
Secondly, I’ll remind you all of a website Bethie sent to us a few years ago: www.annualcreditreport.com
I highly recommend that you take a quick look at yours to make sure no funny business is going on. Windsor asked me if I had seen my credit report lately and when I said not for a couple of months they really got aggressive. Maybe in the end they weren’t doing anything wrong but who knows what else they might have pulled if I wasn’t the uptight kind of person that I am!
Well it’s 1:30 pm now and I am going to put this issue to rest. I still have a few hours to get some work done before I am off to the Annual IBD IT Dinner — mexican food and geeks: two of my favorite things!
p.s. Thanks Rob for giving me the idea for the title