It’s been a while since you’ve received any good financial news, but right now it seems that things are looking up in a major way: It looks like all of the fraud the person who stole your identity is committing using your name is actually improving your credit score big-time.
Can we get a HELL YEAH?! This totally rules!
When your email was hacked last month and a malicious criminal got ahold of all of your personal info such as your name, social security number, address, phone number, and passwords, your initial reaction was to freak out and assume that your credit was going to be irreversibly ruined. But due to the fact that your credit was so piss-poor to begin with that it had nowhere to go but up—combined with the counterintuitive complexities of how credit is built—your score has actually climbed a whopping 362 points and counting since you fell prey to a phishing scheme that your high school friend’s sister forwarded to you.
Absolutely dope!
Being that you never had the wherewithal to build up your credit using loans or credit cards on your own terms, your score was basically nonexistent—that is, until your hacker began apply for numerous low-limit credit cards in your name, thus establishing your credit for the first time in 32 years and bumping up your score over 100 points. Even better, by making a series of small purchases from innocuous-sounding shell companies on the cards to avoid arousing suspicion of fraud, and then using some of the cards to pay off others so the accounts would stay open, the thief began establishing a responsible payment history which brought your score up even higher. Finally, the crook requested credit limit increases on all of the cards they’d fraudulently opened and lied about your income by saying your salary is $700,000 a year, making both your debt-to-income ratio and your credit utilization ratio favorable for even more credit score bumps.
Booyah! What a dream come true!
This is an absolute game-changer. Thanks to a helpful hacker in Mogadishu or wherever, you’re finally capable of getting approved for a mortgage or taking out a loan for a brand-new car. It’s time to take yourself out to a $1,200 dinner on your new Visa Platinum Rewards card, baby, because by being so careless with your personal information, you’ve earned it. Whoever said crime doesn’t pay clearly has never had their credit score go up substantially due to having their identity stolen. Cheers to your new financial future!
