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sorry to hear about this. I had a similar thing happen about a year and half ago. I had a so called friend steal a check from my checkbook, buy new checks and then used my Identity to bounce about 3K worth of checks and open up about 25K worth of credit lines. I found out who it was and he's been caught, procescuted and sentenced and I'm still dealing with this shit.
a couple things I have learned to help prevent this:
1. call the three main credit reporting agencies and put fraud protection on your credit report. This way if anyone wants to give you credit, by law they have to call you and get your authorization before they do it. So if you are getting calls for things you didn't apply for you know something is wrong.
2. buy a safe. It can be a cheap little thing that you bold into your closet or something. Put your passports, Check Books, Bank Records anything that has your personal info on it in the safe to make it harder for someone to steal it.
3. shread everything that has your info on it before you put it in the garbage. This one is especially big if you live in an apartment building because people go through apartment dumpsters looking for this type of stuff.
4. like other people have said get your credit report at least a couple times a year and make sure everything is correct on it.
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