I Don't Know Who I Am

My dad occasionally gets on my nerves with his refusal to throw away junk mail addressed to me at his house. He wants to save it all for me so that I can throw it away. The compromise is he throws away anything that is obviously junk mail, and the rest is placed in a pile for me to check every now and then. Until today, there was only one piece of mail in the las 4 years that I'm glad he didn't throw away.

He called me at work this afternoon to ask if I was expecting anything from Dell. I said no, just throw it away. He said it didn't look like junk. I told him to open it... my last name was brutally misspelled. The address wasn't mine. And it was a bill for a couple thousand dollars worth of computer equipment. I've heard identity theft is a b*#&@ to deal with, and now I'll get to find out firsthand.

Dad faxed the statement to me at work. I called Dell Financial Services to tell them it wasn't mine. The nice Indian woman asked me to confirm my account information, and I told her I didn't have an account. This confused her. She asked me for my phone number, and I told her she didn't need it, as it isn't in her computer. "But we require a phone number for you to open an account." I told her I never opened an account. This confused her.

She did, however, recommend I call my local police and provided me with some interesting information. She told me the phone number the person opened the account with and the location UPS shipped the stuff to. (I have thus far refrained from calling the number... I really want to... but I don't want to screw up the police investigation. Ok, that's a lie, I really want to, but my wife has strongly suggested not messing with criminals, and she's much smarter than I am.) I googled the address to find that it's only 6 minutes east of my house. A Hamilton County Auditor property search found no such address, but several apartment complexes are near where the address would be if it did exist.

The cop told me I needed to come down to HQ and file a personal crime report and call the credit bureau and let them know wha' happened. He said the guy probably gave an address that is geographically close to those apartments, knew the UPS tracking information, and just waited for the goods to show up.

I can't believe I really have to prove that this wasn't me. It's mindboggling that some ass is able to open a credit card account with my SSN when said ass can't even spell my name right or get a current address or phone number. Think about it... if you owned a store and some ass ordered > $2000 worth of stuff on account, wouldn't you want some sort of proof that the ass really is who he says he is? Is it really that easy that all anyone needs is a SSN and a name that is somewhat close?

This doesn't appear to be a fun thing to fix. At least the commercials are still mildly entertaining, although less so than they were before this afternoon.