I'm me, no really, I'm ME.

I discovered yesterday morning that I am a VICTIM OF IDENTITY THEFT.

I wish I could add something snarky, like I saw someone who has my exact outfit! or looks just like me!, but alas, this is a very serious, take-10-years-off-my-life reality.

Before I launch into the terrible details, I am ordering all of you to PROMPTLY go and order your credit report RIGHT THIS INSTANT. Pay that stupid $25 fee to have a year's subscription to all 3 reports - IT'S WORTH IT.

I happen to have the year subscription, and have been getting emails from them for the last week that I have "alerts" on my credit report. I finally logged in yesterday morning (after having to call them to see what my password, etc was) and to my absolute HORROR, I saw ELEVEN NEW CREDIT CARDS HAD BEEN OPENED IN THE PAST TWO MONTHS!!!

No, I'm not kidding. I so wish I was.

After spending THREE hours on the phone to the different credit card companies and credit reports (I'm glad it was a slow morning at work), I found out the following:

*Whomever opened these accounts did so from MY OLD APARTMENT in California. We (yes, you too) are now wishing heap of heinous evil to happen to HIM. (I like to think that if it was a girl so badly desirous of money, she'd go find herself a sugar daddy.) I of course had to physically restrain myself from driving down to my old apartment and taking this fellow DOWN (because of course I could actually inflict any real damage).

*This obviously upstanding citizen and contender for the Most Ethical Human Being of the Year award not only has my name, my date of birth, and my mother's maiden name, but also has my social security number.

*I do not know how he got my social security number, but WE (you too) are blaming the terribly inefficient and not-fully-functioning post office branch from there. (I had problems with getting my mail the ENTIRE time I lived there, and they have NOT forwarded all our mail up here.)

The good news, and what perhaps makes me the luckiest identity theft victim ever, is that only 1 credit card had a balance - a whopping $26. One of the credit card companies surmised that because all these accounts are so newly opened, this Model Human Being was just lining up as many credit cards as HE could before going crazy.

I now have a 7 year fraud alert on my credit, so anytime anyone tries to open up an account under my name, they have to call me at my home phone. Oh, and there was a Discover card application that was in the middle of being processed that was, of course, immediately shut down. HA. HA HA. HA. Take that.

I really just wish and hope (as do YOU) that he gets taken down in an extraordinarily emarassing and humiliating way. And I sooo wish I could be there to see it and then jump out from behind the hidden camera and say something witty and evil. Yes, witty and evil. Like YOU GO TO HELL, YOU GO TO HELL AND YOU DIE. You know, something mature like that.