Identity Theft Recovery | Consumer Justice

At Consumer Justice Law Firm, we help you recover from the harmful consequences of identity theft by upholding and protecting your rights under federal and state law. This includes enforcing your rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act and others, and doing everything the law allows to hold financial and credit companies accountable for the reckless way they handle your data.

Justice for identity theft victims looks like this:

Making financial and credit reporting companies

fix their mistakes

pay you compensation for the harm they caused, and

pay for your legal bills because you had to force them to do the right thing

How Identity Theft Harms You

Identity theft harms you in two ways: (1) The primary harm caused by the immediate financial and credit fraud. This looks like money depleted from accounts, credit lines maxed out, benefits (like Medicaid or Social Security) stolen, etc. This is the direct financial hit from identity theft. (2) The continuous, slow-rolling hits that just keep coming after identity theft are like the ghosts that linger long after the crime is committed. This looks like banks and other financial institutions that refuse to acknowledge identity theft, play games with refunding money or zeroing out balances, keep reporting wrongful data in your credit reports, and send accounts to collections.

Money directly stolen. Fraudsters can access your bank accounts, including savings, checking, money market, and other, to transfer or deplete funds.
Debts in your name. Thieves can access current lines of credit, such as credit cards, personal loans, home equity loans, and more, or open new ones in your name, including credit cards, personal loans, auto loans, mortgages, and more.
Benefits stolen. If you receive social security, Medicaid, or other benefits, thieves can access, drain, or redirect them, or open benefit accounts in your name.
Credit reports riddled with bad data. Unauthorized credit checks, fraudulent transactions, unapproved loans, all get reported on your credit profile as if you did them yourself.
Reputational damage. Financial and credit reporting damage rarely stays between you and the agency reporting it. In fact, credit reports are made to be used by decision-makers. Anyone seeing yours while it’s full of data generated by fraud will assume the worst.
Mental and emotional distress. From missing out on long-awaited opportunities to losing sleep due to worry or being plagued by anxiety, the toll these errors take is real.

What Identity Theft Recovery Is

Identity theft recovery is a type of consumer protection law devoted to helping identity theft victims get their lives back. As a crime, identity thieves can potentially be prosecuted by the state for stealing credit, money, benefits, and more. However, many victimes are left to pick up the pieces themselves in a sea of false accounts and bad data. This is where identity theft recovery comes in.

It is a complicated and involved process that requires (1) identifying every piece of false data created in your name and reported as belonging to you, (2) knowing the full complement of your rights and the wrongdoer’s obligations under the relevant federal (FCRA, EFTA, FDCPA, and FCBA) and state laws, (3) being aware of all relevant statutes of limitations for each and every detail, (4) knowing which credit reporting and data furnishing companies to contact, (5) understanding how to dispute errors and gather evidence without infringing any of your legal rights, (6) being able to hold companies accountable for stalls, delays, and inadequate investigations, (7) preventing or stopping debt collectors from the relentless pursuit of unpaid debts and accounts that you never authorized or opened, (8) holding any credit bureau, data furnisher, or other company accountable for prolonging or worsening the harm done to you, and (9) filing a lawsuit to get you money.

How to Detect Identity Theft

Unexpected Credit Denial. If getting turned down for a loan, credit card, mortgage, or other loan or financing opportunity is a surprise, you need to investigate.
Inexplicable Credit Drop. Any sudden or sharp drop in your credit score is a red flag.
Unauthorized Credit Checks. If you didn’t authorize having your credit pulled, someone else did.
Unfamiliar Bills. Receiving information or bills for services and accounts you don’t recognize needs immediate follow up.
Unknown Loans. Store cards, credit cards, and other loan products that aren’t yours but show up on your credit profile in your name point to credit fraud.
Collections You Don’t Recognize. Notices or phone calls from debt collection agencies seeking payment on accounts you never opened or services you never arranged for can quickly spiral into a debt harassment nightmare.
Unauthorized Bank Withdrawals. Money leaving your bank accounts without your knowledge needs immediate attention.
Shocking Loss of Benefits. No longer receiving benefits that you have been receiving or should be receiving can mean someone else is getting them in your name.
Questionable Account Updates. Receiving unexpected confirmation from banks, lenders, and other accounts that your address, email, password, or other info, has been updated in their system should be taken seriously.

Steps To Take After Discovering Identity Theft

Step 1 Talk to a lawyer

What makes recovering from identity theft tricky is that some claims are time-barred and have to be dealt with rapidly, while other claims get lost in a system that is supposed to investigate and correct errors but frequently falls short. A lawyer will clearly set out your rights, guide you through the dispute and recovery process, and get you compensation.

Step 2 Let the credit & finance companies know

Carefully review your credit report from each credit bureau and your account statements from each financial company (credit, banking, investment, benefits, store accounts, etc). Note every instance of wrongful or inaccurate data, no matter how small. Report and dispute the bad data or unauthorized activity as soon as possible. Freeze your credit.

Step 3 File a criminal report

File a report with your local police, your state’s Attorney General (if applicable), and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Filing a report paves the way for criminal prosecution, but it also supports your efforts to clear your credit record of false debts, loans, withdrawals, etc.

How An Identity Theft Attorney Leads You to a Full Recovery

Not every identity theft case ends in a lawsuit, but many do. Litigation usually becomes necessary when financial companies and consumer reporting agencies simply fail to do the right thing. Seemingly simple things, like being notified of fraudulent charges due to identity theft, that should have a relatively straightforward solution, become prolonged and painful battles.

Unfortunately, in the world of consumer data, the struggles and requests of any one individual are easily lost in an automated tech void. While algorithms may help produce mass quantities of credit reports on a regular basis, they are particularly bad at rectifying problems that pop up, such as the credit reporting nightmare that happens after identity thieves strike.

Knowing when, how, and who to sue is everything. Here’s how we help you:

We know the law. We know the laws that protect you and how to go after these careless mega-corporations using every possible legal option available.
We know the problems. We’ve seen, heard, and handled every type of consumer reporting error and put our full knowledge and resources into everything we do.
We know the tricks. We know the tactics used by these companies to delay doing anything to fix financial or reporting mistakes. They’d rather convince you it’s a lost cause. We know otherwise.
We provide legal guidance. We help you gather necessary data and evidence, craft and file legally sound disputes, and advise you of your rights and best practices along the way.
We file a lawsuit. If your errors aren’t corrected or the fallout persists, we file a lawsuit to hold companies accountable. We might sue companies that (a) caused or enabled data breaches that lead to your identity theft, (b) failed to use adequate methods to prevent, investigate, or correct bad data generated by fraud, (c) engaged in harassment (such as unscrupulous debt collectors) for non-payment of fraudulent charges, loans, and accounts, (d) failed to act within the legal time frame for investigating and fixing disputed data, and (e) received notice of identity theft but continued to report the false information anyway.
We get you money. If you’ve been harmed by errors and bad data and you’re entitled to compensation, we know how to maximize it.

The Role of the Fair Credit Reporting Act

Identity theft has consequences that can spread through your credit profile quickly. The credit bureaus and other consumer reporting agencies are part of a fast and furious data industry that depends largely on the ability of monstrously large corporations to gather, process, and report data for tens of millions of individuals on a rolling basis. In the balance between speed and profit, accuracy is the first thing to go. And you pay the consequences. Because identity theft-related errors are part of a persistent, systemic problem, and because they cause genuine harm to people every single day, the federal government passed an important piece of legislation- the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) to try to protect you.

We rely heavily on the FCRA to build the best possible cases and get the best possible outcomes. The FCRA gives you critical consumer reporting rights, including the right to:

review your credit reports for free
know which data in a credit report was used to deny you an opportunity
dispute credit report errors
file lawsuits against the responsible parties
seek compensation for harm suffered
make the wrongdoers pay for your legal costs and fees

How to Dispute the Errors that Plague Identity Theft Victims

Act quickly to dispute fraudulent charges, transactions, and loans. There are critical statutes of limitations involved in disputing fraud, and typically the date that sets everything in motion is the statement date on which the criminal activity is first reported. Once you notice something is off, jump into gear getting things locked down and disputed.
Review your credit reports and financial statements for mistakes and unauthorized activity.
Gather any evidence and documentation you have to support your dispute. This should include the police report and any communications with the FTC or state Attorney General’s office.
Follow the rules for the specific financial company whose data you’re disputing.
Write a thorough and clear letter explaining exactly which information in your credit report or financial statement is wrong and why.
Mail your letter, along with copies of the supporting documents, via certified mail to the credit reporting and financial companies. This preserves your rights and leaves an easily traceable trail. Avoid using online dispute platforms.
Keep a copy of the letters and documents for your file, along with the mail receipt.
Track the days. Credit bureaus and lenders holding credit cards, charge accounts, and lines of credit have 30 days to respond.
Don’t give up. If they don’t respond, don’t investigate, don’t fix the errors, or claim that their investigation confirmed the bad data and fraudulent activity, you need a lawyer NOW.

How Fee-Shifting Makes the Wrongdoer Pay Your Legal Bills

One of the most important and least known facts about embarking on the identity theft recovery journey is that you don’t have to pay out of pocket for legal help. Under the FCRA, you are not expected to spend your own money or take on debt just to dispute reporting errors and demand corrections of your data since you didn’t create the problem in the first place. The ones who made the problem have to pay to fix it.

At Consumer Justice, we respect this fee-shifting provision for the role it plays in our legal system, especially since it serves as an equalizer, bringing justice to everyone, including those who otherwise couldn’t afford to work with an attorney. We value each and every client and every case, and appreciate that the law has carved out a way to center equity and fairness in legal representation for consumers harmed by big business data errors.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I file a police report for identity theft?

Yes. Once you know that you’ve been victimized by identity theft, you should immediately shut down any further access to your accounts, benefits, and credit by contacting your financial institutions and the credit bureaus, and file a police report. The police report is what begins the process of investigating the crimes of identity theft and identity fraud, but it also plays a key role in the recovery process. For instance, many of the financial and reporting companies will require a police report to confirm that the disputed accounts, loans, and activity is, in fact, fraudulent and unauthorized. A police report filed close in time to the discovery of the crime is also very helpful if you need to move forward with a lawsuit against any financial, credit, or debt collection companies.

What can I do to prevent identity theft?

Use these tips to help you stay safe: (1) Stay on top of your accounts, checking in regularly so you know when something doesn’t make sense. (2) Never follow a link or click on anything unless you KNOW it’s legitimate. Treat every email, text message, or phone call that you didn’t initiate as if it were a scam and work backwards to verify if it’s legitimate. Look at the specific phone number or email address of the sender. Check for errors or awkward language. Call every company or agency directly to confirm they sent you an email, text, letter, phone call, etc. Be skeptical of any claim of urgency. (3) If someone calls or texts from an unknown number claiming to be your loved one (and even sounds like them) call or text your loved one directly to confirm it’s them. (4) Only use public WiFi if it’s safe. (5) Use an RFID-blocking wallet. (6) Use strong passwords and password protection software (if you can).