Consumer complaint received 2018-10-27
Company: EQUIFAX, INC.
State: PA
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports
Sub-product: Credit reporting
Issue: Problem with a credit reporting company's investigation into an existing problem
Sub-issue: Investigation took more than 30 days

Complaint:
I am a victim of identity theft. Someone that i trusted broke into my safe and stole my IDs, credit cards, debit cards, checkbooks, and other financial records. They opened many accounts in my name and made many, many unauthorized charges to my existing accounts. I filed a police report when I started to discover that this was happening to me and two months ago, I was contacted by our local police department to let me know that they had arrested individuals who had my stolen credit cards in their possession. However, my identification documents and checkbooks were not found. 

Due to all of the fraudulent accounts and transactions made in my name, I filed police reports and an FTC identity theft affadavit due to the damage that was done to my credit which had been excellent prior to this. I listed all of the fraudulent accounts on the report and even included my correspondence with local police. I had everything notarized and I even included my driver 's license and bank statement to show proof of identity and address. I also included pages from my credit report which contained the fraudulent accounts and circled them to make sure there was no confusion. i also included the standard but required statement which indicates that the disputed accounts do not relate to any transactions I have made and that they were the result of identity theft. I also included a copy of my domestic violence restraining order which was filed against the identity thief and subsequently granted in superior court. I wrote a cover letter to tie everything together and submitted all the aforementioned documents in a package to each of the 3 major credit bureaus : XXXX, XXXX, and Equifax. 

XXXX  responded within a few days and blocked all of the fraudulent accounts as requested. XXXX took a little longer but they blocked all of the fraudulent accounts except for one that is still pending. 

Equifax, on the other hand, didn't block any of the accounts and it has been almost 2 months since i submitted my block request and all of the accounts are still on my credit report as being " in disupte '' or " verified to be accurate. '' But no one asked them to verify anything. Of course the creditors are going to say that the information they are reporting is accurate because they want their money. The last thing they want to hear is that they won't be paid back because an identity thief took it. 

Per FCRA 605b, Equifax has 4 business days to block the accounts so long as the consumer submitted all of the required information. I clearly did this as both XXXX and XXXX responded promptly and took immediate action. Equifax clearly has not looked at my documentation which includes communication from law enforcement that clearly indicates that people were arrested with my stolen credit cards and that the cards have been booked into evidence and that the DA is handling the prosecution of these individuals. If they would have read through everything, it would be clear that I am a true victim of identity theft and that people are being prosecuted due to the actions that I have taken including the police reports that I filed. 

With that said, I have no qualms about taking legal action against Equifax as well for non-compliance with FCRA but I thought that I would give them one last chance ( as a courtesy ) to remove the fraudulent accounts from my credit report. They are the only bureau to allow these fraudulent accounts to continually report to my file. For a company that reports late payments, they aren't exactly on time being that they had 4 business days and it is now almost 60 days later. 60 days late does not look good for anyone and they should know that better than anyone. 

And for a company who recently had such a gigantic data breach -- one in which I was a confirmed victim -- I don't understand why they would be this apathetic. I understand that they may be leary because there are people who file identity theft reports to game the system but i can guarantee that none of those people had all of the documentation that I had, including 3 police reports, a restraining order in place, and numerous communications with law enforcement -- nor the pending cases in superior court against these criminals. I suggest Equifax wake up and figure out what's real and what isn't before I make my next call to my attorney.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation