Drew Armstrong, U.S. health team leader of Bloomberg News, writes about how it took six years to recover his stolen identity.
Armstrong writes, “Attempting to get through to credit agencies, I spent a year calling banks and credit card companies. Each had a byzantine maze of customer service representatives, forms, and affidavits. I mailed packets to financial institutions with copies of my passport, driver’s license, and utility bills. I have an inch-thick folder of documents, a record of the double life created in my name and my attempt to take it back: old credit card records, credit reports, the indictment against Manukyan, a form I sent to the Transportation Security Administration to get a redress number so I could travel freely.
“Some episodes were comic—or absurd. After I explained my story over the phone to a woman at Bank of America Corp., she thanked me for being a customer, which I’d never been. The bank then sent me a tax benefit filing for credit card debts it had written off after Manukyan was arrested and they went unpaid. They even refunded me fees erroneously charged to Manukyan.”
Read more here.
