The Worst-Case Scenario After the Equifax Hack

she got an email from a coworker. And my colleague at the time was doing the daily court checks and he checked the press release for this district attorney's office and saw a case with my name on it, and he forwarded to me as a friendly joke, just kind of going like, ha ha, what are you doing? After hours? The charges against Louise's namesake included armed robbery, prostitution, and drug possession. In any other situation, Louise would have just

laughed it off. But five months before, her wallet was stolen in a San Francisco mall. The thief had gone an open bank accounts and her name and was overdrawing them. She was starting to receive collection notices. When I saw the email in my inbox, I was like, Oh, my gosh, is this related to that. I opened the email and I checked the charges and it was my exact birthday, So I knew immediately that something was wrong. Using some of her reporter contacts, she got in touch with the

attorney in charge of the case. He told her it was normal protocol to prosecute the defendant under the name they were using when they got arrested. I continued to get press releases with my name on it. Um. So about two months went by with you know, first it was the charges, then it was a court date, and it was a plea, and I, you know, slowly getting updates. When it got all the way to a plea and

a sentencing, I started getting really worried. UM. So I decided to go down to the court myself and attend the sentencing sentencing to make sure that it was not going to be Louise Cho who was sentenced to these charges. Is did the woman show up? She was. She was in custody the entire time. Did you get to meet her? I did not meet her, but I definitely I witnessed

my own sentencing, so to speak. I sat in the peanut gallery while she stood up in front of the court as Louise chew and you know, pleaded no contest to the charges, watching her imposter gets sentenced to two years in prison. Louise realized she really needed a hustle, and she narrowly avoided becoming a convicted felon that day by filling out some crucial paperwork something called a judicial declaration of innocence before she left the courthouse. But it

took Louise seven years to fully reclaim her identity. She continued to fight collection agency after collection agency as they hounded her and even her relatives for the unpaid bills from all kinds of things that she never bought. I am brad Stone and I'm Lazette Chapman, and this week Undercrypted, we're talking about identity theft as we begin to understand the potential fallout from a devastating cyber attack on the credit bureau Equifax. The hackers still highly sensitive information on

one three million Americans. In the past, identity theft victims had their credit cards, I d s, and Social Security cards taken from them. Physically, Luise had her purse snatched in a shopping mall. The Equifax hack stole all that information, but on an epic scale. We probably won't understand the

full impact of the consequences for years to come. We'll talk to experts about what you can do to protect your identity, not just because of the breach at Equifax, but the tons of other data heights that have left so many Americans vulnerable over the years. Stay with us, all right, Breaking news this morning one of the bigest security breaches in history, and there's a very good chance your personal information has been breached. Credit In September seven,

Equifax announced that it was hacked. Stens this morning about a massive breach at the credit monitoring company Equifax, and some experts are saying it could be the largest single breach in US history. Equifax, of course, is one of the three big consumer credit reporting agencies in the US. That means Equifax is basically a vault full of most American consumers most sensitive financial information. How big a deal is this? I mean a hundred million people. That's pretty

much everybody in America, isn't it? Every day we're learning more about what exactly happened, But we still don't know two really important things. Who was behind the attack and where that stolen data is now? Right, but the federal authorities are working with the FBI and have opened a criminal investigation. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission, and at least thirty four state attorney generals have also

opened inquiries. Congress is due to question the CEO, Richard Smith on October three. I doubt he's looking forward to that day. Yeah, but you know, this is hardly the first data breach. That's true. Hacks have increased in severity and scope in recent years. Some of the names that spring to mind home Depot, Target, Yahoo, Anthem all getting targeted and compromised. Now, these other hacks, they stole email addresses,

credit card numbers, and phone numbers. But you know, Brad, like we were talking about earlier, this this Equifax breach, it was worth right because it touched so many people. Equifax keeps records on everything from your credit card spending to your mortgage free payments, and the company is your address, your birthday, driver's license number, and crucially your Social Security number, all of which was compromised in this breach or potentially

breaches plural. The unfortunate reality is that the system we have has really elevated the importance of the Social Security number. Is an identify fire to to the peak. That's Eva Velasquez. She's the president and CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit that helps victims of identity theft. It is the holy Grail of identifiers and it should not carry

as much weight as it does, but it does. So it is what you can use to open lines of credit and really establish an identity in a lot of areas. So again, medical can provide it to law enforcement, and if there's a criminal issue that's occurred, um you can use it to apply for government benefits and file taxes. So it's very very open. What can be done with

the social Security number. Louise choose story that you heard about earlier is a good example of this, because our social Security card was in the wallet that was stolen from her. Access to that number was what allowed the thieves to do so much damage. Eva says the Equifax breach makes people even more unerable than a typical pickpocketing because most people don't carry their Social Security card with them.

Identity theft isn't something we think about a lot, but especially now that Equifax has been hacked, it's something we all need to confront. Identity fraud of facts fifteen point four million US consumers last year, which was a record high and at increase just from two thousand and eleven. That's according to a study from Javelin Strategy and Research.

So the Equifax breach is massive in comparison. It's huge. Now, we're not saying that every person who's information was stolen will suffer identity theft, but disturbingly, and this is the part that freaked me out when we were reporting this out, is that the fallout doesn't appear right away. Usually it comes out in dribs and drabs over many months and years. Right in some cases, it can take decades to finally end a case of identity theft, giving the thief time

to commit o our idea of crimes. And that's part of the torture. I would say about five years, after about five years had passed, UM, the account started falling away and my credit score came back at the lowest. My FICO score was down into like the five range. So luckily I didn't have to take out any loans or I didn't need any of those pieces um at the time, it would have been impossible. That was Louise who we met earlier, but she's not the only one.

Here's Molly Leisure. Her wallet was stolen out of her purse back in two thousand. Every time I think I had had it solved, something else would pop up, or I'd get a letter, or I'd get a you know, a towing notice, or I'd get a another citation in the mail. And I took a really long time, I mean two years from the date of the of the original theft, you know, for it to stop. And so there was just that for a long time. I lived with that feeling like waiting for the other shoe to drop. Um,

you know, when is this going to end? In Molly's case, the thief was able to get a California driver's license with all of Molly's information. When Molly visited the d m V to resolve the matter, it was like a punch to the gut there, you know, I'm I was standing there at the d m B counter saying no, I'm no, I'm Molly, and they said, well, this is this is Molly, pointing to the picture of this woman. And so for me to have to jump through all these hoops to prove who I was was very disconcerting.

The thief used Molly's I D to open bank accounts past thousands of dollars in bad checks, get a car loan and rack up parking tickets, bridge toll evasions, and generally just rereak havoc on Molly's life. Her credit score and her peace of mind were ruined. I had definitely moments of panic where what if I can't prove that this isn't me? And you know what, A I can't get this sort of out? What if this is going to follow me forever? Ronnie Bogel's fight was much longer

and messier. When Ronnie was eighteen, his older brother, Gary Wayne Bogel, stole the paper copies of his birth certificate and Social Security card out of their grandmother's bible. Today, Ronnie is forty six, so he's been dealing with the fallout for decades. He couldn't get an apartment or a cell phone, or buy a car in his own name. It took a huge toll in his life and his health. Just I mean, it's complete emotional collapse, um emotionally in

physical collapse at one point, I think. But when I was twenty one, was around twenty one, I was so emotionally drained, uh that I was hospitalized for such things like dehydration from buying so much and being so depressed. That sounds terrible, but it's not uncommon at all. People talk a lot about the financial impact fraudsters have stolen an estimated hundred and twelve billion dollars in the last six years alone, but the emotional toll is equally or

possibly even more damaging. According to a survey conducted by the Identity Theft Resource Center, at the end of seventeen percent of the three people surveyed, seventeen percent reported it ending a relationship with their significant other, and eight percent of those people reported feeling suicidal. I liken the experience to having a condition sort of like chronic pain. This is Louise again. It was the the onslaught of these collections notices and UM, the shame of not being able

to get a new credit card, having my credit cards declined. UM. Collections agencies would come after me on a weekly basis UM, and some of the more unscrupulous ones would threaten me. UM. They would call my relatives and threaten them. And these are relatives that did not know what had happened. And so I had relatives thinking that I was a deadbeat or just not paying my bills. And trying to evade authorities.

Victims of identity theft, like Louise and Ronnie have to live on just cash for many years because their credit scores takes such a big hit, which is a tremendous inconvenience on its own, But for some victims, identity fraud can have scary social and medical implications too. Eva told me about one woman who had her wallet stolen. The thief who was addicted to metha and fetaments and pregnant, presented the woman's I D to the hospital when she

gave birth and abandoned the baby. The identity theft victim had to undergo a medical exam to prove she didn't give birth. Her own children were yanked at of school, interviewed by Child Protective Services, and she still gets contacted regularly about back payment of child support and other issues. Every time the child who was a and then by a real mother moves to a new foster home, she'll be dealing with this for the rest of her life.

In Ronnie's case, his brother started getting medical care using Ronnie's name. I was severely deftly alerted to Kennicillen he had not, so it was his constant fear that if something has happened to me and I needed medical treatment and all of my records are all mixed up, would I be given tennessellen? Would I be suddenly, you know, given treatment that I didn't move. Eventually, collection agencies came after Ronnie, demanding seventy five thousand dollars in overdue bills.

It was horrifying to be faced with that. I mean nothing that I was going to be able to do at that point to get above and beyond what was happening to me. How did you respond to them? I mean, they're fine time begging, this isn't e And the response was, you know a lot in a lot of cases, the

majority of the security is quick, quick, quick, wasting our time. Um. The way that the alternetys and the creditors talked to me on the phone was so abusive that not only was I facing what I was going through and had been for so many decades, I felt they're coming after me. My way, ages are going to be garnished, the apartment that I've co signed, it is going to affect that person's credit. It was it was torture. How many phone calls do you suppose you made probably and I am

unfortunately not exaggerating, probably ten thousand. You know, Harriet, that's a lot of my life. Yeah, yeah, that's a lot of my life. I spent making phone calls for something I didn't do. I'm sorry, I'm on. You know, the pain is still there, you know, in a lot of ways. She don't get it back. You don't get your turn back, not only of your commentcial abilities of your try As we've been hearing, having your identity stolen can destroy your life. And when it comes to the Equifax hack, we simply

don't know how much damage has been done. Sometimes after a cyber attack, the data appears on the dark web, the online black market if the attacker is trying to make a quick buck, but those stolen identities have not yet been found. That's making some experts worried that the thieves have more complex ambitions that have yet to play out. That also means this is the perfect time to make sure you do what you can right now to protect yourself. That the first thing you need to do is pull

your credit reports. That's eva our identity theft expert again. Even if you aren't a victim of this, each if you haven't pulled your credit report in a while or ever. This is one of the first steps that you can do to take control. Everyone is entitled to a free credit report every twelve months from each of the three major bureaus. You can request it from annual credit report dot com. Once you do that, you need to review

it carefully. It's not complicated, it's just a little bit tedious, and make sure that there's nothing on there that's unfamiliar or that you don't recognize. And then if there is fraudulent activity, you need to go directly to the source. You need to report that to the issuer of the credit and then to the credit reporting agency, whichever one is on your whichever credit report it's on. Maybe it's one, maybe it's two, maybe it's all three, so there is

some leg work involved there. Once it's accurate, you can put a freeze on your credit This means no one can open new accounts unless you unfreeze it. You can also set a fraud alert, which requires the creditor to verify your identity before issuing a credit card or opening an account. This won't stop the thief like a credit freeze would do, but it does require the lender to

take additional steps. Another step you can take is to enroll in a free, year long credit monitoring service that Equifax is offering as a way of apologizing to consumers. You have until November twenty one to enroll, or you could also pay for other credit monitoring services. This is something that you will have to do for the rest of your life. Good identity hygiene is just a part of the world we live in. It's like brushing your teeth, and a breach highlights that for us. Grad You've been

the victim of an identity theft too, haven't you. That's right, Losette. Yes, my friend brad Stone up in Seattle. No, some fellow with a bit of an online shopping addiction who obtained my personal information some however ten years ago. I really have no idea how, And I just started to get notices that bills would do different accounts that I had

never opened. Would you do? Do? You know? It's a real nightmare, and you know we don't want to scare monger here, and you know the chances that your identity will be stolen are small, but oh my god, like I put fraud alerts on the three credit agencies. Then I kept going, I put freezes on them. They give you pin numbers. You gotta save the pins, and then when you want to take out credit it's an ordeal. But I will say this. At one point I got frustrated and I called the guy in Seattle because I

had I I somehow had all of his information. Oh, I had it because all the stuff that he was ordering online was being delivered to his to a home. So I called up and I said, you know, and I just I said, uh, I think somebody's been impersonating me here and I would really appreciate it if you would stop, and they might stop. Well, uh they did. It did stop when I put freezes on the accounts, because that nobody can open up an account in your name.

I also had to wrangle with my credit card company and all these different e commerce companies to go and reverse the charges. It was. It's a nightmare. Today Ronnie is forty six. It's been almost thirty years since he first realized that his brother stoles birth certificate and Social Security card from him. His brother is serving seven years in prison, the maximum sentence for stealing his identity, and Ronnie today has a lease and a phone in his

own name for the first time. I'm no longer a victim. I'm a survivor. Meanwhile, for Louise, it's been a decade since that day she sat in the courthouse and watched her imposter gets sentenced in her name. After years of endless calls with collection agencies, she thinks she's finally cleaned up the mess. But even for her, the psychological scars from the criminal case and hearing herself be sentenced are

still there. Yeah. I mean, she still carries around the paperwork that proves her innocence, signed by a judge ten years ago, everywhere she goes. She also checks her credit report every single month. I asked her if she has any last parting tips for our listeners, to be really honest with that that whole experience. Obviously, I do what's logical and practical. Um, but I also learned that we

don't have control over our information a lot. This happened so often, and you just have to be prepared for it. You know, if you're going to be engaging in the Internet, and you know, online shopping or online banking, there's really no way you can fully protect against everything. So um, my best advice is just to understand what information is out there and be prepared if something happens. And that's it for this week's episode of Decryptive. Thanks for listening.

If you've been affected by the Equifax breach and have a story to share, get in touch at decrypted at Bloomberg dot net or I'm on Twitter at Lizette, Underscore Chapman and I'm at brad Stone. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts, and while you're there, please leave us a rating and review. This goes a long way to get this show in

front of more listeners. This episode was produced by Pio Gakari, hockey Ito, Liz Smith, and Magnus Henriksson of Very special thanks to our reporter Natalie Wong who helped with today's show. We'll see you next week.