Verizon screwed up, trying to force me to pay for it
Complaint
Gregg H
Country: United States
I was not even a Verizon customer. While I was living with no electricity or phones after Hurricane Sandy, Verizon let someone purchase seven iPhones at once under my name. Strange, because whenever I buy a cellphone with AT&T or T-Mobile, they require me to show my driver's license. Anyway, I never received any bills because I was not living in my house. I was a bit shocked when I received a collections notice for 2,400. Verizon said I would need to fill out a police report, which I did. After I sent it to Verizon, they stated it was not "done correctly" and the police would have to change it. When I went back to the police station, they stated in a polite way that I could go F&%# myself. Well, so now Verizon is still trying to collect their $2400, despite having no proof (such as a signature) that I ever bought anything from them.
Comments
There's no money in it for them to "accept" an id theft report, when they think they can get the money from you.
You sent them a police report, reporting the theft of your identity and its use to open a fraudulent account.
That is what FCRA/FACTA requires, and it also requires that the company that you are disputing to respond promptly and cease collection on a fraudulent account. They are probably trashing your credit, and selling the "account" off as fast as they can, so they can pretent they "didn't know" it's fraudulent.
Contact your state Attorney General for assistance.
In addition, if they are trashing your credit, or you continue to be harassed over this fraudulent account by either Verizon or a collection agency (probably AFNI), get an attorney and sue them, for violations of FDCPA and FCRA. You can find a consumer attorney in your state through www.naca.net
AFNI has a long history of using "id theft" as a deceptive collection tactic. In 2007, after buying millions of Verizon accounts left over from the Verizon mergers with othere telecoms like MCI, AFNI started sending out millions of dunning letters to just about anyone they could locate who had a similar name. There were thousands of consumer complaints reporting they were receiving bills for "accounts" they had never had. AFNI apparently trained their employees to respond to many of the angry consumer calls by claiming "it must be id theft", then making them jump through hoops (police report, proof of where you lived at the time, etc) until people gave up and paid unowed "debts".
They used this tactic to such an extent that they skewed FTC's id theft statistics for 2007 in a study reviewing companies reported associated with id theft. For 2007, Verizon shot to #1 on FTC's "id theft complaint" reports, with AFNI at #2, when prior to that, there were only a couple debt collectors at the bottom of the top 25. The tens of thousands (or more) of id theft complaints this would have generated would have wasted thousands of hours of police time, on "accounts" that were probably simply sloppilly "skip-traced" and collected anyway. Your local police might have been stuck with this BS before.
The systematic nature of this scheme was revealed in a class action lawsuit against AFNI in 2008, when a federal judge ruled their letter sent in response to consumer disputes to be "materially deceptive". They basically sent out a blanket response asking for a whole bunch of information "before we can investigate", regardless of what the consumer even disputed. The effect was to systematically stonewall all customers attempting to dispute bogus "accounts".
Even though they claim that statements were sent to your address while you were not there, based on AFNI's history of deceptive collection, that may be entirely made up. Not only have they been caught making up "proof" of alleged debts on the phone to consumers who could not possibly have opened the account, they have also been caught "guessing" that some sucker "owed" it, based only on matching addresses. Yes, people have received bills in their name because they once lived at an address that some later resident got phone service to.
To be effective in these "account fixing" schemes, AFNI typically withholds actual copies of statements that might reveal the details of the actual telecom creditor account information, like actual account name and address, dates of the statements, calls made, etc, any of which would easily reveal that it wasn't the target's account. Basically a lie of ommission.
Be warry of anything they claim on the phone, as well as anything they send you that is not traceable directly back to Verizon. You might be dealing with a fraudulent account as they claim, or they might have "fixed" it to match "you". The runaround over your police report is consistent with their typical stonewalling tactics.
Best way to get AFNI's (or Verizon's) attention is either a complaint to your Attorney General, or a lawsuit.
NY AG should be familiar with them, as they were generating high complaints levels in New York state during the 2007 fiasco, but NY complaints appeared to taper off after vague news reports of an "investigation" by a state legislator. They are a slippery bunch.