Picture if you will, one of my closest friends from high school and ten years after. She becomes a CPA, I become a computer geek. I move to another country. I entrust her with my tax returns. She doesn’t want to sign her name as the preparer because she doesn’t want to have to file as a preparer. I trust her. She is my friend. She then steals my social security number off my tax paperwork and uses it to get herself a phone. She’s got bad credit (shouldn’t that have been a tip off? a CPA that has bad credit???) and can’t get a phone of her own. She doesn’t ask and doesn’t tell me she’s doing this. Of course she doesn’t, she could loose her CPA license over a thing like this. It’s identity theft! Shit, she could go to jail over something like this.
Three years later I am back in the country and I try to get a phone. I discover my social security number is associated with a delinquent account. They tell me the address associated with the phone number and I find out, holy shit! It’s my ex-friend, the CPA, the one I trusted with my private information, has stolen my social security number! She’s stolen my identity! I have to spend hours on the phone between Pac Bell and Ireland, getting records for all sorts of things, Utilities, rent, bank statements, to prove I wasn’t even in the country while the account was active. Not an easy task to deal with landlords and utility companies in Ireland. The account is listed in her name, with my social security number. I clear the matter up and they give me a phone. I move, they give me yet another phone, no problems, no issues. My credit report for three years after the incident shows no signs of any problems with Pac Bell.
Fast forward four years to today. I get a call from a creditor. Turns out, Pac Bell has asked them to find me, to clear up this matter. They don’t have records of ever contacting me about this matter. I’ve had two Pac Bell accounts since then! The matter was cleared up! I do a search for my ex-friend to see if I can find her in case you have to open a law suite to clear my credit. I find out my ex-friend, the one who stole my identity while she was a CPA, is the finance person on the board of directors of a fairly large, local town! Genius!