perspective tenant claims bad credit due to identity theft

[Doreen Arminio]

I interviewed a perspective tenant who is a police officer. Her credit is really, really bad, but she said it was because her identity was stolen. Is there any way to verify that?
thanks
doreen

[Jennifer Minge]

If they were the victim of identity theft, then they would have to have filed a police report to show that. Ask them to produce the police report where they filed for identity theft.

Considering they are a police officer I would say something not right. They would have access to creating police reports without it being a "real" and "verifiable" police reports. I am a landlord so I am very suspicious of comments like this from my tenants.

I would have them give you a copy of the police report. Then I would call the police state where the report is filed and ask them to send you a copy of the report. You have to pay for it. Compare the report from tenant to report from police officer.

Ask them to tell you all the accounts that were false accounts created by the person who stole their identity. Compare that to their credit report.

Also if they have a police report of identity theft, they should be able to give that to the credit reporting agencies and have the false information removed. Ask them why this has not been done? As a police officer he would know how this is done and should have done it by now. Police departments have lawyers that they can call on for help. They should have gotten the police lawyer involved and had this negative information removed.

If the negative information is from last month, that is one thing. But if it is from last year then something ain't right.