Report Identity Theft

You must report identity theft to the police. As I had indicated, upon discovery of an identity fraud, you need to put a fraud action plan together to guide you through the process. One of the items on your list should be to report identity fraud. You want to do this mainly for a few reasons; first, you want to declare officially that the transactions are not yours nor were they authorized by you, second, an official date is logged as to when you filed the discovery of a crime committed against you, third, you have evidence in your hand, confirmed by an independent third party, that a crime was committed and the financial institution can not repudiate the fact that you had contacted them, and lastly, you need this report to place an extended fraud alert on your credit report. Can you imagine if your call or letter to the financial institution to report identity theft was lost in their records? How would you prove that you had properly contacted the institution to notify the identity theft case within the time permitted? You should never rely on one source of evidence if you have access to other sources. That’s why I said in my own identity theft story that it was a mistake on my part not to report my case to the police. Although, the credit card company credited all the unauthorized charges, closed the credit card account, and provided us with new credit cards within a few days after I notified them, they could have just easily reversed their decision a few weeks later or upon completion of their investigations because they lost all records of our phone discussions and agreements. How would I have then proved that I had called them previously to declare my innocence? Well, the police report would have been nice to have in that case.

Update your fraud action plan to report identity theft and learn about other fraud victim steps.