There seems to be an increasing number of parents using their college-age children as benefactors, stealing their identities to take out massive amounts of debt in their children’s names — and then balking when their children find out and confront them about it.
For one woman on Reddit who found herself dealing with this, the situation was so dire and her parents’ reaction so adverse that she ended up taking matters far above their heads — and having her parents hauled off in handcuffs.
The college student’s parents took out debt in her name, leaving her with $60,000 in credit cards and loans to pay.
Her story is one that is becoming rapidly common. “My parents took out credit cards and loans in my name,” the woman, a college student, wrote in her Reddit post.
She, like many other young people this has happened to, was living away from home and had no idea what her parents had been up to.
“I don’t have a key to the mailbox,” at her parents’ house, she wrote, “so I never saw the bills or anything.” But as she neared the end of college and her life began to change, her parents suddenly started acting in ways she found strange and suspicious. Slowly, their ruse began to fall apart.
When she began preparing to move out on her own — which would require a credit check — her parents suddenly began freaking out.
“I just finished my third year of university, and I was going to move out,” she wrote. “That would require me to get a credit check and stuff.” As soon as she mentioned it, her mom and dad became weirdly agitated.
“My parents freaked out and forbade me from moving out,” she wrote. “They said it was stupid that I would waste money on moving out when I could save money living at home.”
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At first, she thought this was because they didn’t like her boyfriend, with whom she planned to live with. “But no, was I wrong,” she wrote.
“Long story short, I am about $60,000 in debt because of them. I cannot afford to pay that off.” Worse still, her parents are behind on the payments, so it has already begun damaging her credit rating.
When she confronted her parents, they told her she had no right to demand they fix the issue. So, she had them arrested and charged.
The debt is bad enough. But her parents’ reaction takes the story from terrible to egregious.
“I told them that they needed to clear the debt immediately,” she wrote. And, since she could no longer move out due to them ruining her credit, she also demanded they “change the house rules so my boyfriend could spend the night.”
Her parents flatly refused on both counts. “They said that they didn’t have the money to pay the debt and that I could not strong-arm them into changing the rules of their house,” she wrote.
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After the blow-up with her parents, she went to stay with an aunt, who showed her scores of social media posts about situations just like hers. Posts “about parents screwing up their kid’s future and kids allowing it,” likely because they feel they have no other recourse.
This student is not one of those kids, however. “I went to the police and reported it,” she wrote. “My parents got arrested and charged. They are furious with me.”
Parents stealing their children’s identities and taking out debt in their names is becoming a common problem.
As this young woman’s aunt showed her, she is far from alone in this experience. Young people — including literal children — having their identity stolen by someone close to them is far more common than most of us realize.
A 2021 study by Javelin Strategy, a financial research firm, found that 1 in 50 kids has their identity stolen each year, and 73% of the time, the perpetrator is someone they know, including their own parents.
Perhaps it’s just a sign of the tough economic times, but there are even cases where identity theft goes beyond mere debt. Missouri mom Laura Oglesby, who stole her daughter’s identity so she could pose as her daughter at a college to meet younger men online, is just one example.
This Redditor wrote that she feels bad for her parents despite everything — which is a natural human response. But she absolutely did the right thing by overriding that feeling and throwing the book at her parents.
Aside from the fact that her credit rating may now be ruined for at least seven years — affecting everything from her ability to find housing to her ability to land a job — reporting financial fraud and identity theft to the authorities is vital if the victim is to avoid paying off the debts racked up in their name. Not doing so also opens victims up to legal troubles if the perpetrator uses their identity to commit other crimes.
“I do not know what they [spent the money] on. I don’t care,” the student wrote. “I feel bad for them, but I’m not letting them [mess] up my future.” It surely wasn’t easy, but it was necessary.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.
