Mandamac775
Junior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Alaska
First off, I am Manda, I am looking for some guidance/advice on what to do for my situation. I have never had this kind of an issue, in short i had a shared AT&T account with my husband and my friend (who was an AT&T employee at the time). I physically live in ALASKA and have done so since 2011, all the changes and charges to my account that happened where in NY. Detailed story below. Thanks for any help, I am sorry if it is a bit lengthy, there really is no way to have a short version of this.
A friend of mine shared a AT&T mobile phone account that was under my name, I was going to close the account to switch to a local carrier, but the friend said she would take the account into her name so she didn't have to go through the process of opening a new account. Her being a manager at AT&T said could do everything quickly and all we would have to do is pay the fees to unlock our phones to be able to transfer them to the new carrier. Upon unlocking our phones and starting the account transfer request to the friend, so that she could take the account into her name, we removed our phones from the account and to our local carrier, the friend informed us a few days later that everything was fine and that she had everything changed over into her name (account login, password, billing address, payment and ownership). Having no reason to doubt this we figured the matter closed. In January I got a credit alert and found out that the AT&T mobile phone account we had transferred to the friend had been sent to collections. After speaking to AT&T I was told that without a court order the most she could tell me was that the day after we removed our numbers from the account the friend or someone who worked at the same store as she did Syracuse, NY (unable to get employee IDs until court order is submitted) stopped the account transfer, opened 3 lines with her families names and old phone numbers while upgrading their phones and opened a 4th line and gave it a 907 area code with my name; the lady at AT&T also was able to tell me the location all the account activity occurred at (Best Buy in Syracuse, NY). She also stopped paying the bill and after a few months she (or someone at her store) opened an additional 3 lines and removed all phone numbers of her and her family. The current total due is $5,152.37. The friend is currently working at cricket wireless in Syracuse, NY where her phone number was transferred to. I have never been to NY and AT&T has assured my wife that they will cooperate completely with any requests to resolve the matter as it is clear to them that the charges were not made by or authorized by me.
Now upon further review of all the above, and after also being told by AT&T that someone that is an authorized user is allowed to make these types of changes, I did some digging and found out that she in fact should not have been able to add or remove a line, change billing address, OR make an authorization under my name (identity fraud, you need my last four to add or remove lines). As of Nov 2014 I no longer had any access to the account, the account has been sitting since May of 2015 with this high balance. NOTE: I did not find out about this debt until I checked my credit report in January due to a notice my score had dropped.
We have been trying to get a lawyer to work with us (no one has been in contact) and have seen legal services at our base (was not much help), so my question is do i file a fraud/identity theft with FTC then with the local police department? and/or what [other] steps do i take to get this resolved?
Link to user rights for AT&T: https://www.att.com/esupport/article.html#!/wireless/KM1009073
First off, I am Manda, I am looking for some guidance/advice on what to do for my situation. I have never had this kind of an issue, in short i had a shared AT&T account with my husband and my friend (who was an AT&T employee at the time). I physically live in ALASKA and have done so since 2011, all the changes and charges to my account that happened where in NY. Detailed story below. Thanks for any help, I am sorry if it is a bit lengthy, there really is no way to have a short version of this.
A friend of mine shared a AT&T mobile phone account that was under my name, I was going to close the account to switch to a local carrier, but the friend said she would take the account into her name so she didn't have to go through the process of opening a new account. Her being a manager at AT&T said could do everything quickly and all we would have to do is pay the fees to unlock our phones to be able to transfer them to the new carrier. Upon unlocking our phones and starting the account transfer request to the friend, so that she could take the account into her name, we removed our phones from the account and to our local carrier, the friend informed us a few days later that everything was fine and that she had everything changed over into her name (account login, password, billing address, payment and ownership). Having no reason to doubt this we figured the matter closed. In January I got a credit alert and found out that the AT&T mobile phone account we had transferred to the friend had been sent to collections. After speaking to AT&T I was told that without a court order the most she could tell me was that the day after we removed our numbers from the account the friend or someone who worked at the same store as she did Syracuse, NY (unable to get employee IDs until court order is submitted) stopped the account transfer, opened 3 lines with her families names and old phone numbers while upgrading their phones and opened a 4th line and gave it a 907 area code with my name; the lady at AT&T also was able to tell me the location all the account activity occurred at (Best Buy in Syracuse, NY). She also stopped paying the bill and after a few months she (or someone at her store) opened an additional 3 lines and removed all phone numbers of her and her family. The current total due is $5,152.37. The friend is currently working at cricket wireless in Syracuse, NY where her phone number was transferred to. I have never been to NY and AT&T has assured my wife that they will cooperate completely with any requests to resolve the matter as it is clear to them that the charges were not made by or authorized by me.
Now upon further review of all the above, and after also being told by AT&T that someone that is an authorized user is allowed to make these types of changes, I did some digging and found out that she in fact should not have been able to add or remove a line, change billing address, OR make an authorization under my name (identity fraud, you need my last four to add or remove lines). As of Nov 2014 I no longer had any access to the account, the account has been sitting since May of 2015 with this high balance. NOTE: I did not find out about this debt until I checked my credit report in January due to a notice my score had dropped.
We have been trying to get a lawyer to work with us (no one has been in contact) and have seen legal services at our base (was not much help), so my question is do i file a fraud/identity theft with FTC then with the local police department? and/or what [other] steps do i take to get this resolved?
Link to user rights for AT&T: https://www.att.com/esupport/article.html#!/wireless/KM1009073
