Originally Posted by kane

Stole my identity, drained my bank account and ran up about $40K in credit accounts.

I had moved into a new place and one day I get a call from a guy I used to work with and hang out with, but hadn't seen in a while. I tell him I had moved and invite him over for a beer. He comes over, hangs out and we BS, have a beer and have a good time. What I don't know is that when I went to the bathroom, he grabbed my checkbook off a table and snagged a few checks out of it, he also saw my wallet and wrote down some information out of it.

About two weeks later I get a call from a plumbing supply company tell me the check I had written them bounced. I assumed they had the wrong number. After talking to them for a few minutes it seemed like they were looking for me, but I had never heard of them. I called my bank and found out my checking and savings accounts were empty and overdrawn.

This guy had new checks printed using the few he stole and wrote checks all over town. Some of them cleared then once my checking account was empty the checking pulled from the savings. He ran that dry and then they started bouncing. In the meantime he went to numerous stores and opened up credit accounts in my name and bought things like tools and jewelry (stuff that is easy to sell). It was easy to ID him because there was some video footage of him at the plumbing store. Once they knew who he was it was only a matter of time.

It took about a week, but we caught him (with help from the credit reporting agency) and then it took about a year for me to straighten out the mess that was created by all of this.