Are You a Prime Candidate for Identity Theft?

When my husband and I were in the process of purchasing our home we received a disturbing call from our mortgage broker. He called to tell us that our credit report had come back with some derogatory information. There was a string of unpaid credit card bills and other monies owed that turned up on our report. The mortgage broker suspected fraud, because he also saw on the same report we were paying our other accounts on time and in full. It turned out that a former neighbor had stolen my identity. By the time the police caught up with her she had racked up two thousand dollars in credit card charges, rented an apartment, had a phone installed and acquired utility services, all under my name. We were alleviated from the responsibility of the credit card charges after proving that I did not make them. It took three months to clear the mess up. Because we had a credit report done for our loan, we found out about the fraud and were able to stop things before they got out of hand. If we had not found out, we would have had a much bigger problem on our hands. Full Article