A reader, Mrs J, asked:
Since February my husband has started to receive letters from WageDay Advance, Satsuma and QuickQuid saying that he has loans with them that need repaying. He doesn’t have any loans. We have sent Prove It letters to all three. We have now had letters saying that WageDay Advance and QuickQuid have passed the account to debt collectors.
In addition, he has now had a letter from Visa Vanquis saying that he has an unpaid credit card. He doesn’t have an account with them. On speaking to them, it seems that the account number doesn’t exist and that it will be sorted out at their end.
Along with the Prove It letters (sent by recorded delivery), my husband has also phoned WageDay Advance, Satsuma and QuickQuid telling them that the debts are not his.
They have not proved that the debts are his but they keep sending letters. The debts appear on his Experian credit record. I dread the post arriving every day. Why is this happening? Do you have any advice about what we should do? It’s really starting to get us down.
This sounds like identity theft.
There are other possibilities if a debt collector contacts you about an old debt you don’t recognise, or if you find debts you don’t recognise on your credit files. But to be suddenly chased about recent loans by several payday lenders and a credit card company suggests that someone has got hold of your husband’s details and is using them to apply for credit in his name.
Mr J has done the right things so far: sending a Prove It letter and phoning up the lenders. It is disappointing that none of the lenders seems to have actually grasped that there is a real problem here.
Here five things I suggest Mr J should do now. Some of them may turn out to not be needed, but after six months, I think going for them all is the best approach to getting this all ended as soon as possible.
1 Report identity theft to Action Fraud
Mr J should inform Action Fraud about this identity theft because it is a crime. He can do this online and he will get a Crime Reference Number (CRN).
This is unlikely to result in a police investigation, but being able to tell the lenders that you have reported this, and give them the CRN, should hopefully mean they take it more seriously.
2 Inform Experian about the identity theft
Experian have a Victims of Fraud team that can help you sort out problems – contact them at identityfraud@uk.experian.com or call them on 0344 481 8000.
3 Check his other credit records and statements
So far this has mainly been a nuisance and a worry to Mr and Mrs J. Although the scammers seem to have got enough details about Mr J to fool a new lender, they haven’t mentioned any problems with their own accounts.
But it’s good to be very careful now and for at least another year.
Mr J should check his records with all three credit reference agencies every month, see Check your credit records for free for how to do this. He is looking for any new debts or accounts he doesn’t recognise and any new addresses or associations with other people being added.
He also needs to look at his bank statements and credit card statements every month to check that there are no wrong purchases showing on there.
He could also consider changing his passwords for online and mobile access to his bank accounts and credit cards. Until something wrong shows up, this isn’t essential, but he may decide that it’s better to be totally safe.
4 Put in formal complaints to all the lenders
I suggest he also makes a formal written complaint to each of the lenders, by email or letter. He should put COMPLAINT ABOUT IDENTITY THEFT as the title of the email.
These complaints need to say:
I have told you before [give dates] that I do not recognise this debt [give details of the debt on your credit record] and asked you to prove that it is mine. You have not done this and you have continued to send me letters. [add on if that the debt has been passed to a debt collector]
I have never borrowed from you. I have reported this to Action Fraud, this is my Crime Reference Number: 99999999.
I want you to do the following to put this right:
a) write me a letter accepting that the debt is not mine
b) agree that you will not sell this debt with my name on it to any third party
c) remove the debt from my name with all UK credit reference agencies
d) after this, cease to send me any more communications about this debt.
If this is not done within 8 weeks, I will be sending this complaint to the Financial Ombudsman and asking for compensation. This has been causing me and my wife a great deal of stress and you have just been ignoring me.”
If the lenders don’t give in and agree, Mr J should send the complaint to the Finanical Ombudsman and ask for compensation for the time and stress this has caused. He will need to send a separate complaint for each of the lenders.
5 Sign up for Cifas protection
Additionally, to stop any more problem debts happening, Mr J needs to sign up for protective registration at Cifas. This costs £20 for two years but I think it’s worth it.
After this has been done, when the thief tries to open a new account using Mr J’s details, the lender will see the Cifas flag and will have to contact him to ask if has applied for this credit – he can then say No.
This won’t stop damage Mr J’s credit score and it won’t stop Mr J himself taking out any further credit – it just means that his real applications will take a few extra days to process.
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AB1509 says
Hi
This happened to my husband years ago when we applied for a mortgage. The mortgage company said it would approve us if we paid off the arrears we had them on a bank account. We didn’t have an account with them so we’re baffled.
After some digging on his credit report, someone had been opening up accounts everywhere with his name and date of birth but not our address.
It was written off by mortgage lender as we could prove that he was actually out of the country when the person who had opened the account had actually gone into the bank with ID apparently!! Scary times when we thought we were careful with shredding documents etc and this was long before we were connected to the big wide Web.
We got experian to put the cifas warning on our credit file which meant we had to have extra checks when taking out credit but it was worth it and it sorted the problem out.
What was frustrating though is that the person who was doing this seemed to be protected by data protection as the bank wouldn’t allow us to see any documents this person had apparently used to open the account nor tell us anything about their investigation into how this happened. Lucky we could prove it wasn’t him.
Sara (Debt Camel) says
It is a nightmare when this sort of problem comes to light in the middle of a mortgage application!
Louis says
I’ve acutally had a bank phone me once to verify some details about a new account I was opening, told them right away that it wasn’t me, not to open the account and they told me what information had been given. It’s shocking as to what people will do though but just glad nothing happened! The identitify theft film might be all laughs but not in the real world!
Ode says
Had a payday loan taken out in my name by someone close to me with out my knowledge, was unaware of this untill i received a defult notice, rang the company up and was told that they would look into this and get back to me, a month later i received a letter from a debt collector demanding payment so i rang them to explain and was told i need to make these payment. So i decided to set up a payment plan as i didnt want this to hurt my credit. Made my final payment in June and low and behold they loan company place a defult on my credit file, so i sent an email no reply the following week i decided to call and explained everything he said that he can see i phoned up in feb of 2018 but the underwrite that i spoke to do not work for the company anymore and they cant remove the defult as they have no notes from the underwriter, he emailed me an E mail acknowledging the account was opened fraudulently and they had no contact details at that time to contact me to make amends on the account. What can i do? as he refused to remove the defult. Many thaks
Sara (Debt Camel) says
It was very foolish to pay a debt when you are trying to tell the lender it is identity theft.
“he emailed me an E mail acknowledging the account was opened fraudulently and they had no contact details at that time to contact me to make amends on the account.” who emailed you and what date?
Karolina says
Hi Sara,
I stayed in UK for few weeks back in 2009, opened basic barclays account and went back home to Poland. Came back to UK in April 2010 for few weeks as well. Account was still open. After few years I realised i had that account so I called barclays and was told the account was closed down. I moved to Australia few years ago and out of the blue i reminded myself about barclays. So I called them and they couldn’t help me since I don’t have any letter anymore with details. They said to use mylostaccount so I did and got letter form barclays bank account was closed.
Karolina says
So the account was closed in 2012. Which is fine. But then j was wondering if I can check if someone was using my ID to open bank account or take loans?
Do you think it’s worth to ask CRA for statutory report? Or should I ask them them for SAR? Or should I maybe sent it to Cifas or somewhere to find out what info rhey have on my name etc.?
I contacted a person I was staying with in 2009 and said she can’t remember getting any mail in my name at the address. So do you think i should check it after 9-10 years?
Regards,
Karolina
Sara (Debt Camel) says
Honestly I don’t think you need to check after all this time. Wait until you have some evidence that there could be a problem.
Karolina says
So you think I should just leave it alone? And not ask for credit reports etc?
Sara (Debt Camel) says
You have nothing to suggest there is any problem, have you?
Karolina says
Nope, no problems whatsoever.. just curious 🤷🏻♀️ I don’t even know if Barclays had my polish address to contact me or not..
I don’t know how it would work if someone took my identity and take a loan etc since I didn’t have anything in UK, no work no income.. i don’t even know why I started to worry about it