My parents stole my identity when I was a kid and tanked my credit. AMA.

As an attorney I strongly, strongly recommend you consult an attorney. Contact your local Bar Association and ask for a referral. You will only have one chance to resolve this correctly. If you don't resolve it correctly you'll be stuck with bad credit and debt. An attorney can you help you get it right the first time. Well worth the cost. I know you're young and don't have much experience with your credit score, but please believe me that your credit score is worth more than the entire cost of the debt your parents generated. You need to protect it.

My college has free legal consultations so I'll have to see what they can do for me.

Go to your local police station and show them the report and ask them how cases like this are usually resolved.

That's what the companies say when I talk to them about it, but with the cash amount that was stolen is enough to warrant a class C felony. I don't want to send them to jail.

I DO want to send them to jail.

Whenever I get a new call or bill about a new outstanding balance, or see the ridiculous things that they did (my grandmother bought hundreds of dollars worth of clothes, shoes, and jewelry, using my Social Security card like her very own Visa) I get riled enough to consider it, but I always pussy out in the end.

You are not worthy of respect for protecting your grandparents. You think they'll stop this behavior? Your protection will just enable them to do this to someone else, either in your family or outside of it. Sometimes you have to think beyond your own desires and do what's right to protect other people.

Edit: I guess your parents are really your grandparents.

Oh I know for a fact that they've done it to other people. My mom and aunt had the same problem. They didn't find out until they tried to get loans for college and were denied.

ask the police, i'm sure they know of a lot of cases where family members have stolen from each other, and the victim wants to get his/her stuff/money back without sending them to jail...

Mediation might be the way for you to fix this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediation

Well they're willing to give me money when I have it, but I have to file charges to get all traces of this removed from my credit report and to cancel ongoing contracts.

Are your parents aware that you know this? How has this influenced your view of them and/or your relationship with your parents?

Well it was actually my grandparents, but I grew up living with them so its all the same. I knew she had used my name to order some stuff from Home Shopping Netowork and that she didn't pay. I assumed it was only about $100 and it wouldn't matter so I didn't care until the credit card thing happened. When I found out the extent of the damage that had been done and that someone who raised me since I was a newborn, could use me like a credit card, I was livid and didn't speak to them for a month. I still only call to tell them about he new bills that are coming in..

How did you dispose of their bodies once you found out?

Edit- Spelling meant Bodies*

I ate them. That chili was good as hell, and their teeth make bitchin necklaces.

I've always been curious:

From one cannibal to another, what do you do with the fingers and toes?

I do use the bones to make one of those jingly things you hang in archways.

The toes have those fat tips and I think their the best part so. Save them for last. I always start off my meal with a fresh, quivering heart.

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I did dispute and was able to get some of the charges removed, but the rest want police reports before they accept that it was indeed fraud. One phone company was actually willing to delete the account until they noticed that "I" had presented a drivers liscense when the contract was signed so it had to have been me. I don't know whether or not to be angrier at my grandmother for stealing my drivers liscense and using it get a cell phone or at the incompetent employees who accepted an ID from a person who obviously wasnt the person pictured.

Can I have the card number? I promise to spend less then them.

I don't really worry about people stealing my identity anymore. It's not like they'd be able to do anything with it.

what did you say to your parents when you first found out?

I've just realized that the question was "what did I say". Well I told them, that I was very hurt that the closest person to me in the world could treat me like I didn't matter.

That they were sorry and would pay it back, but if they could pay for all the stuff they wanted, they wouldn't have needed to use my identity in the first place.

Were they terrible parents in any other ways?

Not at all. I was given everything I was wanted. My childhood with them was amazing.

What if the "everything you wanted" that they gave you was charged in your name on credit cards you didn't know you had?

Actually it probably was. I know she opened a Sprint account in my name and got my cousin a Galaxy SIII for Christmas, so in a way, I may have buying my own presents all these years.

Are you sure they have stopped using your credit and there is no other accounts out there that you don't know about yet? Can you at least cancel the accounts that you don't want to report to the police so they can't run up more debt?

I suspected that there were cell phone accounts, so I called every phone company I could think of, until I found the Sprint account. Unfortunately they refuse to cancel the account and that will bring me more debt as it already has an outstanding balance. But since the company themselves committed fraud by knowingly making an account without my consent, I think I can find a legal way to get out of that one.

Welcome to a typical Mexican family... =[

Yeah I'll have to say a good portion of the kids in my extended family have had bad credit before they'd started kindergarten. I really don't see how someone can live with themselves after that...

It sounds like you have a decent idea on what options you have to get out of this mess, but once you are out of it do you think that you'll be able to trust them again?

I knows grandma has some kind of shopping addiction, so I don't leave my debit card or anything like that lying around for a second. But after she stole my driver's liscense out of my own house like that, I really can't see our relationship in the same light.

Can I borrow tree fiddy?

TREY FUCKING FIDDY!!

Are you Macaulay Culkin?

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130213005641/fallout/images/d/dd/Oh-you-93067263235.jpeg

Yeah, so did mine. It's very common. My daughter's grandfather stole her identity for credit cards.

If it's any consolation, they can't sue you since under 18 can't sign contracts. Your credit will clear up after years.

I couldn't get a decent loan until I was 25.

I was a senior in high school when some of this done so I was 18 at that point. And since I also lived at the address they were shipping the goods to, it's all technically mine.

That proof doesn't prove much.

Yeah I wasn't sure how to go about it. I was going to put the whole report together along with my name or a screenshot of my credit score (which I paid good money to obtain) but I just got a little lazy.

Have you changed your details so that this ends, or are you still being fucked?

I got them to take the other address and phone numbers off, but my listed home address is her house (even though I don't live there anymore) so that's really keeping me tied up with the mail order companies.

WOW I seriously thought my siblings and I were the only ones to have this happen on the face of the planet because seriously, what type of family does this to their kids? I couldn't move out til I was 23 and i got pregnant and didn't have a choice, and it was extremely hard to find a place that would accept us. I recently got a small inheritance and was able to pay off 5k worth of the debt (by settling to pay half of everything, so you can imagine how much was/still on my credit) but there's still more I can't afford to pay. I've always been pretty close with my family, and I lived with them, so I couldn't do much about it and feel ok with myself. My mother got double the inheritance I did and offered to pay me back some, but never did.

Yeah and the thing is, I don't think I'm the one who has it the worse in my family. If you go to one of my aunt's house, you'll see all kinds of bills (cell phone, utilities, cars, Internet, ect.) all billed to various children of her's.