Description

My father received 3 calls in a row from 212-531-8850 (if you look it up, it's listed as Wells-Fargo). On the 3rd call, I answered and the caller indicated they were from a financial institution (I don't recall if it was Wells-Fargo or not. I looked up the number AFTER the call). The caller indicated that there had been fraud tied to my father's name and SSN - multiple CC applications submitted in his name (we're in MI and the cards had a delivery address in Dallas, TX). Additionally, potential fraud had been identified on 3 credit cards (a charge with eBay, an unsecured website and Netflix) and the SSN was compromised too. None of the cards potentially defrauded were with Wells-Fargo.

Over the course of the call, everything sounded legitimate and once I confirmed that no one had submitted applications for CCs or made the charges, I was "transferred to a representative from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau." The 1st rep (Brendan) even provided a Case # and a code that may have referred to his call center ID. I reviewed the same info with the CFPB rep (Morris Bakers) and he kept indicating that they (the CFPB) would close the impacted cards and remove the cards from Credit Reports. Also, since they have been impacted by fraud, we would not be liable for paying the cards off - even the legit charges. He referenced a 2011 law that protected senior citizens from aggressive CC charges/interest rates, etc.

The "CFPB representative" knew the balances or limits on some of the cards impacted by the fraud. The representative even read-out my dad's SSN and 2 of the CC numbers at one point. The most suspicious part of the conversation was when the rep started talking about my dad only owing 30% of the remaining balances on the 3 impacted CCs. He started talking about arranging payments in 10 or 12 months. I told him that I would need a number to call back once my dad was available to talk. The rep kept trying to keep me on the line to keep the conversation going. Eventually, we arranged for a callback time around 5pm. We started getting calls at 4:40pm, through 7:02pm - with more than 30 calls during that time. We haven't answered any of them. 9 of the calls came from the 212-531-8850 number and all the other numbers varied from all over the country (NJ, UT, MI, OH, FL, IA, ID, CA, WV, GA, IL)