clockworkgreen

Ok, here's the quick story I got from my mom.

Long story short, my dad was in the hospital last March '03. He died May '03.

My mom received a call tonight. The man claims he is from a collection agency and asks to speak to my dad. My mom explains he's deceased and asks what the problem is. He says he's from XYZ Collection Agency, and there's $800 past due on a Sprint Phone card bill he needs to collect. My mom says that isn't possible, and he asks "were the last digits of his social 6789?" and she then freaks and hangs up on him.

She then calls Sprint and says she received this call. She gives them my dad's social and they confirm there was a past due balance for an account, it had been opened March '03, but closed shortly thereafter due to lack of payment and then finally due to being flagged as fraud in October '03. They told her my dad's name and social and apparently home phone number were attached to the account, but his address was listed as an address in Philadelphia, about an hour from where we live. One operator accidentally gave her the "different" address on file, and when she was transferred to another operator, that operator said my mom shouldn't have been given that information. (Regardless, we have it, and if anyone is familar with Philadelphia, the address is in those ghetto houses near the Gas Works in South Philly. But it was still probably a fake address anyway.)

Anyway, so Sprint said the balance of the account was now $0.00 due to being flagged fraudulent and the account and case from Sprint's side were closed and my mom did not owe any money to Sprint.

This happened about 7:00EST when she got and received these phone calls. She immediately called Equifax and reported a fraud case on my dad's social, but did not speak to anyone in the fraud department (I guess they were closed, so she left a message). She called someone again tonight, they need her to fax a bunch of things (my dad's death cert, etc.) She's still calling tomorrow to make sure she has it all straight.

We just so happend to run a credit report on her this past weekend while I was home for 4th of July, and her accounts all look clean. My dad is still listed on some of her joint accounts, so if his ID was stolen in March '03, I think if they were going to try anything with the joint bank accounts it would have happened already. Regardless, my advice to my mom was to go to the bank tomorrow and get my dad's name off any of her joint accounts.

Does anyone have any further advice? I told her what I believe probably happened is when he was in the hospital, someone got hold of his social, opened this account with Sprint using his information, charged up a bunch of stuff, maybe even gave a fake address, and bolted. I guess we'll find out if we get a copy of his credit report, Equifax already blocked me from ordering one online and Experian seems to not let me either. I don't know if that's from recent information or trying to look up the credit report of a deceased (and I don't know quite how they'd know he was deceased, but I suppose they could through all sorts of channels.)

And what do we do about this credit agency, if it's actually a credit agency? After thinking about it, I have no reason to think it wasn't. They knew the balance, knew the company where it was due, had information and even confirmed the "different" address Sprint had on file for the account. So, if they're legit, how do we get them off our backs if they call again?

I guess moral of the story is, run credit reports.

And, does anyone know if after someone dies, if banks and credit cards and all these places are notified that person is deceased? If someone tries to use their social after death, does it get blocked? This seems to have happened right around the last few weeks of my dad being alive, so obviously, his social would come up that he was alive if that statistic was kept.

Any thoughts? Thanks for reading if you've gotten this far.