But Wait, I’m not the Identity Thief!

March 27, 2009 – 1:07 pm

handcuffs What can make identity theft worse than just loosing some money and gaining some bad credit? When the identity thieves make you the criminal instead of them. I have read a couple identity theft stories, similar to the one, and in my opinion they are the worst kinds of identity theft.

Margot Somerville, 64, is a retired Wells Fargo Bank vice president. Margot was picked pocketed on a streetcar in 2006. By the time she noticed her wallet was gone it was too late to find the thief. About 6 months later she noticed that money was missing from one of her accounts. The thief was using black withdraw slips and stolen checks to withdraw money from her account.

This of course is not the worst part of the story. What makes this story worse was when Margot was trying to clear up the identity theft problem the police started to suspect her as the mastermind of an identity theft ring. According to police Margot’s handwriting samples, that she gave willingly, matched the handwriting on some of the fraudulent checks.

This of course, is why one Sunday two police officers showed up at Somerville’s house to arrest her for stealing checks and using blank withdraw slips to steal more than $60,000 from other people’s accounts. Fortunately the charges were dropped after seven months of fighting the charges. Margot walked away from this identity theft disaster but not before incurring $46,000 in legal bills.

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