When the past isn't yours....

Please read: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ap-impact-criminal-past-isnt-182335059.html
Inaccurate background checks are ruining lives.

This has been happening to me that's why I'm asking it to be read. I feel like David going up against Goliath. I just need the right sling shot and a heavy enough stone. LOL...

Hi Jabber,

Steve and I had a sort of similar thing happen to us as well, several years ago. As you might expect, the name "Steve Holmes," is not unique, and some OTHER Steve Holmes's bad behavior was appended to Steve's social security number. The guy was younger and lived in another state. It was a major pain to clean up.

It's awful, and I have a lot of empathy for what you are going through. Almost as bad, however, is when someone steals your social security number and/or credit card. We have been through those "cleans ups" as well.

The guy who stole Steve's SSN probably didn't know him -- they just picked a number and started using it. Meanwhile, they did bad things, racking all their "bad behavior" up against his number.

We knew nothing about it until we went to open a bank account in our new community, and the bank refused to work with us.

We were quite surprised, but did some checking of our credit history, and discovered what had happened.

At the bank's suggestion, we had to work with each of the (I think there are three major) background check/credit history companies, to clean our records.

It was not fun, and apparently once this happens to you, you need to continue your vigilance for a long time. (As the article says, you don't know how many places have downloaded the inaccurate information and added it to THEIR records.)

Then a few years later, we went through a similar thing when our debit card number was stolen. That happened when we paid for a meal at a very fine local restaurant (at a resort) and our debit card number was stolen. As were those of hundreds of other local people in our community - as well as guests of he resort, who had come from all over, of course. We found out about this when someone in Ohio tried to use the number fraudulently.

Thankfully, we didn't have the required amount in our debit card's account. Though, when the card was denied, the thieves kept trying to charge smaller and smaller amounts, so as to arrive at a number that WOULD go through.

We found out about this situation IMMEDIATELY, because Steve was online (as he is most of the time when we are home) and the debit card company immediately notified him of the attempts. Thus we immediately worked with the card company to deactivate it, and we didn't lose anything.

But many of our local friends weren't so lucky... Nor, no doubt, were the people who were vacationing at the resort, and not online to know what was happening until they got their statements a month later...

So you have my sympathy and I wish you good luck with all the painful reporting and wasted hours it is going to take you to get your record cleared.

I don't know how to make it any easier, but I can promise that you will get through this. Older and wiser, of course. Stay strong!

Anne

I'm getting older. And I'm getting wiser. I'm more careful who I befriend these days. Because I've learned, friendship can be much like marriage. They say you don't marry just the person, you marry their entire family. A friend's family can bring lots of headaches too. Someone sicked a background check firm on me, and it's been an on-going nightmare, the likes of which is difficult to describe and one I can do without!