Who Do You Become When Someone Else Becomes You?

Friday, May 16, 2008, was my last day of high school. I came home at about noon after a short day of cap and gown pictures and took a much-needed nap. I woke up and was on the computer for a little while until the phone rang. It was someone from my bank calling, asking me if I sent a wire. I didn’t even know what a wire was, so I said no, and the bank teller said that she must have the wrong member, and we hung up. After about a minute she called back, and Mom answered this time because I was flustered. They talked and the bank lady told her that I supposedly wired my $700 savings to “my cousin” in Eagan, Minnesota. After they got off the phone, my mom and I looked at each other in total disbelief. The idea that someone had somehow gotten to my bank information was so alien at the time, it was almost shattering to think that it was happening to me, at my age. We were totally blindsided.

Once we pulled ourselves together some, my mom, my sister, and I hurried to the bank in the mall. The bank manager explained that whoever had requested the wire has my social security number, my home address, my last name, phone number—everything. They even got my signature because they requested my last check (which was my second to last check really), and it turns out they lifted my signature off the FAX of the check and copied it onto the wire request form. What’s worse is the person apparently used a relay for the hearing impaired (the hearing impaired person types to a person who’s making their phone call for them, who is typing the other person’s responses to the hearing impaired person—hence, relay) to hide their voice or make their call untraceable, leading me to believe they probably have practice at stealing information.

I really lucked out in that the ABA routing number that the person gave the bank was incorrect by only the last digit, and once the wire reached my bank’s main office in Parkersburg and hit the wall between there and Eagan, MN, the wire bounced back and the money came back into my account. The bank called me after the bounce, and I was able to recover all of my money. When the bank teller explained that to me, a wave of relief washed over me; it was only a minor defeat that they had my information when I still had the money they had wanted. I took all my money out of the bank and closed my accounts, except for the $26.40 for which my last check was written.

When we got home from the bank that day I called the social security fraud hotline, Experian, Equifax, Trans Union, and the Federal Trade Commission like the flyers the bank tellers gave me instructed. You can do close to nothing on a Friday evening, let me tell you; every hotline was on an answering machine by 4 o’clock in the evening, and the one that wasn’t on an answering machine hung up on me. I would have gone crazy with anxiety if I hadn’t found something else to focus on; the wire form has the name and address of the fraud’s credit union, which I went to verify online, and a name of this supposed cousin. They’re either the thief, an accomplice, or another identity theft victim, not that I could say that I particularly care, or ever did.

That Saturday Dad took me to the county police department to file a report. It turns out that since the crime happened in the mall, it’s under the city department’s jurisdiction. The county police also couldn’t find any record of this Carole J. Pearson woman when they ran her name, but I assume they checked a criminal database specifically, and if she’s still stealing identities (or is a victim herself) I doubt she’s in that database anyway. After that I had to go to work, and Dad did some research at home. He found the name Carole Pearson through the 411 website, and their address and phone number; so we know that she exists, although not so much her role in this issue.

On Sunday at the library, I got finished with my work duties early, so I went to check my e-mail on one of the circulation computers. I had nothing in my Gmail account—in the middle of the day I usually don’t—so I decided to check my Yahoo account for lack of anything better to do. The one new e-mail in that inbox was a notification about having forgotten my Gmail password from May 15th (Thursday), telling me how to go about resetting my password. I have never forgotten my password for Gmail, so I was a little confused, and a little suspicious. I went back to Gmail and went through the “forgot password” process to verify that that is, indeed, how you generate the specific e-mail I had in my inbox. I knew this was too close to the wire incident chronologically to be a coincidence. I vaguely recalled getting another password e-mail elsewhere that I hadn’t asked for, but I couldn’t remember for the life of me what it was, or where I had gotten it. I was so frustrated at that point that I couldn’t stop myself from crying; being as pride-ridden as I am, I got off the computer with a mental note to look for that other e-mail later, to hide in the bathroom until I regained control of myself.

When I got home around 4:00 I checked my Gmail account, and sure enough, there was an e-mail in my trash from PayPal dated May 12th (Monday) that gave me a link to a password reset page. I remembered being confused by that e-mail when it actually got in my inbox originally, and it also being chronologically too close for comfort I first called PayPal’s 800-number to see what they could do, if anything. It was basically a waste of a phone call, since there was nothing even remotely related to my problem in their numerical options, so after closing my account I went downstairs onto Mom’s computer and printed out both the PayPal e-mail and the Gmail one, and put them in my ever-growing folder of identity theft-related paperwork that had suddenly become my life.

My dad took me to the city police department’s office in City Hall to file another report after that. I talked to Officer Bettis for maybe ten to twenty minutes in the office’s lobby; he said that he was going to go talk to the tellers at the bank for clarification and that he was going to call the local FBI. He gave me his card and wrote the report number on the back of it, and Dad and I left, feeling a tiny bit better.

Monday morning I woke up to find Dad lingering around the house phone, and Mom talking to someone on it. A bank teller was on the other line, saying that the person had tried to gain access to my bank account again that morning, but the teller had told them that the bank’s computers were down. They asked the relay tons of security questions, even my mother’s maiden name, and the person knew all of it. The teller couldn’t outright say no to someone who knew so much of the account information—the only comfort was that they did give the wrong birth year, if not just by mistyping to the relay operator.

After that phone excursion Dad took me to our local Social Security Administration office in hopes of getting the ball rolling with changing my social security number. We waited for maybe half an hour for the woman at the counter to tell me: “No, we don’t change social security numbers for that,” even though the Social Security Administration’s brochure on identity theft says that they do change social security numbers if other means of protection fail, which very obviously they had. I had stayed home from my vacation to New York with my mom to deal with this issue, and Martinsburg’s social security administration refused to do their job. I was absolutely livid, almost to the point of screaming and crying except that I have amazing impulse control.

So we left the social security office. Dad wanted to a run to the bank on our way home so that he could check on his account (and, as he said, to see if the tellers knew who I was; which of course they did, they had just called our house an hour or two earlier—and after this fiasco they never forgot me), and then we went home to make more phone calls to the credit bureaus and to the social security fraud hotline, none of which were any help whatsoever.

Around noon Mom took me back to City Hall so that we could get the written police report, but the people at the desk said that I had to wait for Officer Bettis to come on duty at 4:00, so I went in to work around 12:40 Monday afternoon and agonized over all these things I couldn’t fix while I was working.

After work, Mom picked me up, and we went back again, waited about twenty minutes, and talked to the cop about what happened that morning. He really couldn’t do much of anything, but we did get a copy of the complaint to show the Social Security Administration office in Winchester, where they said they could get me a new social security number with the right documentation. I would have to wait until Saturday at least, because supposedly they were sending information through the mail (which, as it turns out, never came anyhow).

I had graduation practice on Tuesday (May 22). I went there not only anxious to leave and get my life back in order, but I had this horrible feeling of not owning my self anymore; I didn’t feel like a whole person because somewhere out there, someone else had the parts of me that could make or break virtually the rest of my life. I felt completely gypped and couldn’t wait to get out of that gymnasium of my excited, seemingly unburdened peers. After practice Mom took me to get a typed and signed statement from Suzy at the bank that I could show creditors if it was ever necessary. When we got there she told us that the bank in Eagan had called to ask about the wire on behalf of Carole J. Pearson. I couldn’t believe the nerve of this person to call my bank and demand my money that I earned.

After we got the statement Mom and I went to the FBI office in Martinsburg. We went up to the U.S. Attorney General Office on the fourth floor, and eventually got to talk to an FBI agent. He was an intimidating character, well over six feet tall with a Snidely Whiplash mustache. This guy knew what we were talking about when my mom and I explained my situation, and actually at least seemed concerned about it. He was the first person outside of my family to grasp how sophisticated this theft really was. The agent gave me his business card and told me to call him if anything happens, and told me to submit a complaint to IC3, the Internet Crime Complaint Center from the FBI.

When I got home and filled out the IC3, I printed it out and put all the paperwork in order by date and by order of receipt. I put the little papers in a little letter envelope and put that and everything else in a manila envelope. Thus everything was (and is) in chronological order for the next time someone would have to see those documents, and I’d have plenty to show the social security administration in Winchester so that I can get a new social.

Now, about four months later, whoever got my personal information still has it up in Minnesota—possibly. I opened up a new bank account with my mom as a co-signer so that if that person tries to use my information again, they also have to go through Mom’s set of security questions, as well as three or four passwords on my bank account. So far I still don’t have any credit (which is good) and as far as I can tell there has been no suspicious activity on any of my accounts, online or off.

Even so, I’ll have to keep checking my credit report (it’s recommended for at least the next two years) unless I get my social security number changed. I haven’t done it, since this whole thing has died out, but I might do that before next summer, anyhow, just to be on the safe side. I have changed the way I write my signature, though, as well as changed all of my passwords. Even now I still can’t believe all this happened to me, the week between the end of high school and graduation day. Graduating from the small ordeal that was high school was almost a mockery of what I had gone through that entire week leading up to it.

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