Final Update: I had mostly forgotten about this post until a few days ago. Wouldn’t say it has a happy ending. The silver lining is that it only took about 3 weeks and the card that wasn’t mine was out of my name. My credit score went up like 90 points. I also started a new job with a decent pay bump and far more time off.
A couple of months ago my old boss, who was fired, ended up getting killed in a car accident. About a day later, it came out that he had most likely murdered an elderly woman and stole her car. Her daughter went to her house when she didn’t answer the phone and found her mother shot and her car and purse missing. His car was parked on the street a block away. Apparently he fled police stops another 3 or 4 times before crashing into a metal electric pole, no seatbelt. He was fleeing from the police again in the stolen car, they found meth and a gun inside.
I got a call from a lawyer because I was one of the ones who reported the credit card fraud. We talked for maybe 10 minutes about what happened to me and he filled me in a bit about what happened since. There are now 2 lawsuits going through the works supposedly. One is from the family of the woman he probably murdered, they are saying basically the police failed to apprehend him before she got killed. That lists all the police departments and cities involved. The other is from his family going after the sheriff’s department and county which chased him and led to the crash. I doubt I have to testify as the lawyer was mainly concerned about the specific events leading to me knowing it was my old boss who stole my identity. It sounds to me like everyone is going for settlement money.
Just figured I’d let everyone know what happened. TL;DR – he won’t be stealing anyone else’s identity anymore.
Update: My company put the manager on unpaid leave a couple of days after they were contacted by a detective about the open cards. 4 of us ended up filing police reports on the same day. A couple days later, I got an alert from the credit monitoring company saying someone tried opening a Discover card in my name, they put a stop to that. One of my coworkers got a call back from the detective on Tuesday and told him a judge signed off on a warrant for identity theft (I forget the exact term for the criminal complaint) last week. Apparently the detective was able to get video footage from a store of our boss using a credit card registered in the coworker’s name. Our boss also drove a car registered to him to and from the store, all visible on surveillance. The detective said the sheriff’s department or state’s attorney’s department made sure to include the boss’ state in the extradition limits for the warrant.
My coworker said the reason the detective called is because the detective was called by ANOTHER detective in the city where our boss lives. Cops in that city have tried pulling him over 3 times in the last month with the last time being on Monday. All three times he just doesn’t stop. The place has a zero pursuit policy so they have to let him go and they think he might be armed. The house where he is supposed to live is emptied out as well. The detective for my city told my coworker he’s still waiting on other surveillance footage in regards to the rest of the complaints (including mine) and they’ll likely be added on as additional counts, but they want to get him into custody first. From what it sounds like, he’d have to go through the system on his felony eluding charge first, then he could be extradited here to see a judge about the identity theft.
OP:
As if being underpaid at my job isn’t enough, I just found out my boss opened up a credit card in my name. I work at a mom and pop type business in graphic design and my boss is the same guy who hired me.
Two days ago, I got a call from Capital One asking about unusual charges on my credit card. The rep went over a couple of charges and I had literally no idea what she was talking about. I told them it looked like those charges weren’t on my app and the rep said she tried calling at a different phone number but it was disconnected. She confirmed I had two credit cards through them, but I only have one. The rep told me my other account (my actual account) had no strange charges but a different one, opened only in December, was nearing its credit limit and there were two large charges at different Wal-Mart stores.
I asked for the address on the accounts and one was mine, the other, which I had no idea about, was the home address for my boss. They canceled the card and said I might get contacted by their fraud department.
Yesterday, I told my team about it and two of them immediately chimed up that they had their identities stolen last month with credit cards opened in their name. The boss, who works remotely, told about a dozen of us at the end of November we needed to fill out updated W-9s because the company was moving to a new system and send them to him. One of them ran home on lunch and grabbed the letter they were sent from the credit card company, the phone number is ONE number off of our boss’ cell phone number and the address is to a UPS store in the town where he lives. I’ve put up a lot working here but this is absolutely the last straw. The work environment is middling at best but the pay is horrible. I’m calling in sick today and starting to look for something that actually works for me and pays me at least what I’m worth.
Edit: I followed the advice from this post:
YOU NEED TO TELL ALL OF YOUR COWORKERS TO CHECK THEIR CREDIT IMMEDIATELY
You’re also going to want to call the police, like today. If he did it to you and a couple others, my guess is he is probably going to do it to every single person who sent him that W9.
I’d take a couple of immediate steps if I were you:
Get a police report because if the credit card companies think you might be lying, they’ll do what they can to screw you over.
Start a credit monitoring service like this one and check your credit. If he’s opening one credit card in your name, he might have opened several.
Freeze your credit so that he can’t do any more damage.
You said you work for a small company, I don’t know if you have an HR department but that would be my next stop, if you don’t, time to hit up the owners, but don’t tell them you’re about to leave.