De Ja Vu

Well, there's nothing like making a mistake, and then being reminded of it again and again. So I had my wallet stolen at the National Zoo back in July. After all the hassle of getting things replaced and putting a credit freeze on my name, we still were notified in early September that a new credit card had been opened in my name at Chase. Fortunately they sent me a letter saying if this had been opened fraudulently to let them know. We were on the phone right away, and that got closed up again real quick!

Then last week I got a thick envelope in the mail from the "Penn Credit Corporation". I sort of got that sinking feeling when I looked at it! Here's what they wrote:

We are writing to inform you that sensitive personally indentifiable information about you was accessed without authorization by two employees of Penn Credit Corporation . . . Once we learned of this incident, we ended the employment of both individuals. Please be aware that the Manhattan District Attorney's Office is actively investigating this matter . . . In late October 2009 we were contacted by representatives from the Manhatten District Attorney's office concerning an ongoing identity theft scheme perpetuated by a group of individuals, including our former employees. A member of the group with no connection to Penn Credit would contact our two employees after acquiring personal information taken from pick-pocketed wallets. The employees would then, without authorization, use Penn Credit's computer resource to access the social security numbers and other personally indentifying information . . . Contrary to our company policy, those individuals would then share that information with the individual who contacted them. This individual, working with others in the scheme, would ultimately add this data to the information they had previously acquired so that they could conduct fraudulent banking transactions . . .

Wow, my name has been involved in a scam! Praise the Lord that the people at the company were caught. The good news is that Penn Credit has taken a bunch of steps to ensure one employee wouldn't be able to match people's info up like that so easily, and it is also paying for 2 years of credit monitoring through Experian's Triple Alert service, as well as a large amount of insurance in case something happens that doesn't get caught right away. Still, this doesn't give me much confidence that there aren't scrupulous people working in other credit companies. I guess this also answers the question of how a credit card could be issued in my name even after I had a freeze put on my name. Somehow these guys were able to get through that. Scary! I was also glad we switched around all our banking stuff.

I am also a bit worried about the kids. I had their SSNs in my wallet as well. This may seem crazy, but when we travel and need to use a military treatment facility somewhere, we need their SSNs, not just Bob's. I didn't have it when I took Grace in at WPAFB last Christmas for her ruptured eardrum, and it was a total hassle. I just figured it was more likely that we would need medical care than I would get my wallet stolen. Obviously I was wrong, LOL. Now they are all minors, but I am still afraid someone could just use their SSN with a fraudulent birth date. The lady at Experian wasn't very helpful about the possibility of this, other than to suggest we pay I think it was about $25 a month for a family monitering plan. Maybe these criminal guys have bigger fish to fry than worrying about this, however. I'm praying so.

Just one more thing to worry about! Actually, now that I have all this monitoring, I think I can worry less. The past few months I would stop every so often and wonder what was happening and if there was something else I should be doing.