Cell Phone Fraud

Those commercials for fraud pop up from time-to-time. I never thought much of them. “It couldn’t happen to me.” I thought. Yet… Well. I think you know where this story is going. A few days ago $4500 worth of phones were sent to our house. They came from Verizon. We have not had a Verizon account in nearly 2 years. Shortly after the phones arrived, my wife received a call from a man who said his name was Jason Hanes claiming to be from the Verizon Verification Department. He told us that Verizon accidentally sent us phones and that we needed to send them back. A FedEx delivery driver was en-route to our house. In order to add urgency, he stressed that we would face legal action if we did not send the phones back.

Of course, the whole lot smelled rotten. We did not send the phones back with the FedEx delivery driver. Instead, we called Verizon’s fraud department directly. We learned the thieves set up an account in my name, using my SSN. Yuck. They knew our numbers and our old Verizon information. Verizon told us we needed to go to a certified store to send the phones back, and then file a fraud claim. Fun stuff.


As we dug into this incident, my wife and I discovered that cell phone scams are all the rage among thieves right now. Setting up a cell phone account is much easier than other sorts of ID scams. They just open a cell phone account in people’s names, and from here there are several things they can do. They can finance a phone through an individual's name--obviously, I’m an example. My wife (me too) was shocked and appalled by how much credit they were able to get through my name. At least the phones came to our house. Why? Did they make a mistake? Or could they only get them sent to my house. I don’t know. What a mess it would have been if this slipped under our radar. 

Another thing they may do is what is called porting. Basically, they can set it up to eventually steal a number and use certain information to hack accounts. Or, they can use a number in a person’s name to set up credit for themselves, and eventually apply for credit cards in your name. Or, criminals can simply use your name to conduct shady dealings, i.e. drugs, human trafficking, or other schemes.

So what can you do? Well, we’re starting to figure this out. I’ll share some of the stuff we learned. First, most of you might know this. We did. Check your credit report. Not score, your score is useless to you. By law, you get to check your credit report. Go to annualcreditreport.com to get your free credit report. Check it out. Make sure there is nothing on it you did not authorize. 

If you suspect you may be the target of ID theft or you do not plan on getting any credit soon, freeze your credit. To do this, go to each of the three major credit reporting agencies (Transunion, Equifax, and Experian) and follow their instructions for freezing your credit. In addition, you can call one of the agencies and flag your credit, letting them know you’ve been targeted. In this case, you only have to call one and they will let the others know. 
 
But, cell phone companies do not rely on credit agencies in order to determine if you’d be a good customer. They look at the National Consumer Telecom & Utilities Exchange (NTCUE). This is a good place to call to see if anyone has opened a cell phone account in your name. Just type NTCUE into your browser, go to the site and follow the instructions to get a report. In addition, you can go to this site to freeze your account. So, if your feel you’ve been scammed, freeze your report. This stops anyone from opening an account in your name.

With any freeze you do, make sure you save the pin number they give you so that you can unfreeze your account. All-in-all, being the target of ID theft is daunting. But, if you can catch it early, it will make life easier.