I’ve Been Victimized By Fraud Twice—Here’s What It Feels Like

If you’ve been a victim of fraud or attempted fraud, there is a particular feeling of self-doubt and creeping dread that you likely remember. You run through all the conversations you’ve had, the sensitive mail you’ve thrown out, the information you’ve shared—and doubt your memory at every turn as you try to figure out just how screwed you might be.

The feeling still gives me chills. I’ve had my identity stolen by someone who spent a few hundred bucks at various retailers in my name and was a target of mortgage fraud by someone trying to steal my entire down payment days before closing on my house.

Different situations concerning vastly different sums of money, but both of them shook me to my core, had me questioning everything, and provoked levels of anxiety that bordered on panic. Thankfully, I came out of both situations financially whole. That makes me one of the lucky ones, but it hasn’t reduced my hypervigilance. If you’ve been there—and there are millions of us who have—you know exactly what I mean. Fraud anxiety doesn’t fade easily.

I Spent $500 on WHAT?

One day, I received a letter from Nordstrom notifying me that my application for a store credit card had been rejected. I was disappointed, naturally, because who likes to be rejected? but I was also very surprised since I never applied for the card in the first place.

After conferring with my partner, we determined that I hadn’t experienced any major dissociative states lately, so I was left with one inevitable conclusion: fraud.

Within days, I received bills for new shoes from Macy’s and some electronics from Best Buy. After a moment of silence to grieve for the new shoes I’d never wear and the new surround sound speakers that I would never hear, all I felt was the crushing weight of anxiety that someone was out there using my name and my once-impeccable credit to buy stuff.

I never buy stuff for myself; how dare some thief make it look like I was buying stuff for myself.

How It Feels to Have Your Identity Stolen

There was something uniquely disorienting about seeing my name on a financial statement that did not belong to me. It’s not that I had to pay the fraudulent bills (I didn’t) or that my financial standing would be ruined (it wasn’t)—it’s the knowledge that my private information was out there for anyone to use, and the fear of what could come next.

Could they steal my tax refund? Get a passport in my name? Access my bank accounts? As if having thousands of dollars in legitimate student debt wasn’t stressful enough.

In reality, fraudsters are more likely to squeeze what they can out of one target then move on quickly to the next. But when you’re one of those targets, it makes you feel exposed and vulnerable to the world, like nothing of yours is as protected as you thought it was.

Meanwhile, in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to get my hands on whoever did this to me and drag them to the steps of the nearest police precinct with their confession taped to their forehead. But they might as well have been a ghost—you can file a police report, but chances of a resolution in situations like this are slim to none.

So how did I feel in the wake of having my identity stolen?

• Angry
• Scared
• Stressed
• Ashamed
• Exhausted, and somehow simultaneously amped

Now imagine feeling all of that—and more—and having to navigate the labyrinthine process of getting your credit cleared of fraud.

Hi, It’s the Bank—I Swear

After frantic and exhausting calls to the security departments of every lender that I was suddenly in debt to, it was time to start protecting myself from further harm.

I had received a letter from my bank regarding suspicious activity on my accounts, which seemed legit considering I had been experiencing suspicious activity on my (or pseudo-my) accounts. There was a phone number to call the security department—so helpful! Did I mention I have phone anxiety? Yeah…not ideal.

In a flurry of action, I called the number and gave the nice voice on the other end every bit of info he asked for, which he said was necessary to file a report and begin to get these false charges and fraudulent cards expunged from my record. Then, immediately after hanging up, I slapped my forehead like a cartoon meme as a million questions ran through my head:

• What did I just do?
• Who was I just talking to?
• Was that actually the security department, or another layer of the fraud scheme?
• Wait, what info did I give him?
• Is he emptying my bank account right now? Or worse, buying more shoes in my name?

I had just committed every possible error that a person could commit in my situation. Not only was I a victim of fraud—it turned out I was myself a fraud, because what kind of idiot just hands over the keys to the vault because a piece of paper and a guy on the phone said so? To this day I’m not 100% certain that I was actually on the phone with a real security agent from my real bank.

How to Handle This Situation

In retrospect, I’ve realized this kind of reaction is totally natural and nothing to be ashamed of. And it also helped reinforce the most valuable lesson that I thought I already knew about avoiding scams—no matter how stressed you are in the moment, take time to stop, breathe, and do everything you can to confirm the person you’re talking to is who they say they are.

Much like going to the grocery store when you’re hungry, you need to stay mindful of what you’re doing or you will keep spiraling and open yourself up to mistakes that could make everything even worse.

Here Today, (Almost) Gone Tomorrow—A Mortgage Story

My experience with identity theft was stressful, harrowing, and the last experience with fraud I ever wanted to have. Alas, I promised two victimizations. This time it wasn’t the cost of some shoes and a hit to my credit at stake, but rather the bulk of the savings my partner and I had been stashing for years.

When you begin the process of trying to buy a house, there is one thing they are specifically duty-bound to tell you—Beware. Of. Wire. Fraud. If you’re like me, you think “Oh, I am too smart for that. The whole identify theft thing was just someone getting their hands on my data. But now I am strong and vigilant.”

Fast forward to the Friday before our Monday closing, and guess what—I was just barely vigilant. That morning, I received an email from our attorney, looping me into an ongoing conversation with the title company. Names, email signatures, even the phrasing used in the conversation all seemed correct, legitimate, and innocuous at first glance. Then I was asked to confirm the total of our down payment which I, um, did. Oops (cut to scam artists on the other side of the conversation rubbing their hands together in mischievous glee).

Fortunately, all six of my senses—yes, I’m counting the one that can identify BS—were still marginally functional, because I finally realized something was amiss when the next email I received included a PDF with wiring instructions that looked like they were pasted together from different magazine articles like a ransom note from an ’80s movie.

I looked back at the email exchange, and the addresses were close, but not quite the real emails of the humans I knew actually existed. Someone had hacked the email of either my lawyer or the title agency, or both, and spoofed it down to the font on the signatures.

The details of the whole interaction were all wrong, but in the already-anxious days before closing, I almost missed it. I called our lawyer and the title agency at their real phone numbers, I called the bank, I called our realtor, I called my partner, breathlessly repeating the same story five times, all the while kicking myself for breaking rule #1: Beware. Of. Wire. Fraud.

All those feelings I’d experienced in the wake of my brush with identity theft came bubbling back up to the surface all at once. After I made all the calls I needed to make, I took a few deep breaths, tried to calm down, and instead had a full blown panic attack by the elevator bank at work—a location that did not provide much privacy. My heart raced, my face burned, my vision blurred.

The danger was over, but I still spent the longest weekend of my life thinking that everything could be taken away at any moment. I’ve never felt more helpless. And, when we ultimately were able to successfully close on the house the following Monday, I’d never felt happier to have an empty bank account.

The Aftermath

It’s hard to describe the relief you feel when you realize that you have dodged such a major financial screw-up. Because it’s not just relief—there are also intense feelings of vulnerability, fear, and shame. And every time I receive a notice that my data may have been exposed as part of one breach or another, those feelings always creep back in.

Even as I write this, I can’t help but wonder who out there has my information and is simply working their way down a list of other potential victims until I am once again the target of the latest scam, hack, or fraud. It feels like there’s constantly a finger hovering over a button that will steal all my money at any time. It’s enough to make me want to put everything into gold, change my name, and go live in the woods which, to be fair, could do wonders for the stress.