I Ate Dinner with the Person Who Stole My Identity for 19 Years
- Laraun and Sherunda
- Nov 14, 2022
- 2 min read
The holidays are a great time of year to spend quality time with family and friends.
Imagine how awkward it is to eat Thanksgiving with the person who stole your Identity. Axton Betz-Hamilton knows this firsthand. Raised in a middle-class home, her dad a department manager for a grocery store and her mother Pamela was a tax preparer, her identity theft story is a family affair.
“Nineteen Thanksgivings came and went, and (my mother) cooked those dinners for us—me and dad and my grandfather after he moved in in 1995. We were getting robbed by the hand that fed us the entire time,” she said. Betz-Hamilton’s identity theft story started in 1993. The charges on credit cards that were acquired using her Social Security number amounted to about $4,000, but the damage impacted every aspect of her financial life.
"We were getting robbed by the hand that fed us the entire time...”
Betz-Hamilton found out that she had been victimized when, as a 19-year-old college student, she was moving off-campus, and the utility company asked for a $100 deposit. She had bad credit. She ordered a copy of her credit report. She received ten pages back from the credit report.
When she disputed the accounts with one of the credit card companies, she was informed that her story did not hold up. “There had been two payments before the account was maxed out.” The Identity theft will make a few payments so it appears to be normal.
Her mother died of cancer in 2013. The details of the secret life were revealed.
Her mother had stolen her husband's identity and her daughter's identity.
Betz-Hamilton found out by finding a blue plastic file-box hidden inside the farm. There was a 12-year-old credit card statement. The account was in her name.
A disturbing fact about child identity theft is that family members or others who are close to the child are sometimes the culprits. Why? If someone messed up their credit, the easiest way to get a new account or credit card is to steal their kid's Social Security number. Kids will not know if someone has stolen their information for at least 18 years. 1 out of 10 children are getting their information stolen. This fraud can be difficult to recover from because the parents who would normally provide support may in fact be the criminals. Or the parents may have to accuse friends or family members of stealing their child’s identity.
It takes 60 seconds to steal someone's information but it takes 600 hours to restore it.
I have been protecting People from Identity theft for 17 years. My team and I put together a helpful guide on how to find out and protect your children from Identity theft. Download it HERE
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