A man claiming the name "Danny Lopez" who sounded less Latino and more Thai, Laotian, or Vietnamese, called my girlfriend who did not want to talk with him mostly because he was difficult to understand so she handed the phone to me. I told him that if he was from sort of collection agency, send a letter and not to call back. Of course he called back several times.
He also contacted at least one family member and told my checking account and Social Security number to her and said that criminal charges were being filed against ME for a online payday loan through CashNetUSA that was unpaid and was demanding money.
I happen to be a law enforcement officer for nearly two decades and this guy didn't pass the smell test. I requested the name of his company, the company he was supposedly collecting for and told him he could send whatever information he would like to the police department and I would take a look at it. He tried arguing with me for some time...this guy is either stupid or has brass balls.
I contacted CashNetUSA who verified loan dates that he provided me but told me my account is in good standing and that all loans were paid on time and in full. The fact that he had all the information that was provided to the lead source that CashNetUSA used to obtain my loan including SSN, Bank Name, Checking account #, and referrences, leads me to believe one of a few scenarios:
1.) He or someone he is associated with either works for or knows someone who works for the lead generating company and is unlawfully funneling information to their criminal organization to pretend they are collecting a debt for whatever company the loan was actually funded by in hopes of scaring unwitting people into sending money, or;
2.) Their organization has obtained this information from other method, i.e. dumpster diving, hacking into data servers, or perhaps they created their OWN payday loan company as a front to purchase lead information under the pretense that they are a legitimate loan company seeking to fund loan requests.
Unfortunately, the list of ways to obtain information on consumers is long and I cannot possibly post them here. Additionally, I don't want to "train" any bad guys on methods they have not yet tried.
I would highly recommend that you contact your local police agency to initiate a report. I would also suggest as others have, to contact the Federal Trade Commission (
www.ftc.gov) and initiate a complaint there. It should be known that many local police departments do not have the resources to investigate Internet fraud or computer related identity thefts so I would also recommend contacting the FBI's Internet Crimes Task Force. You can get that contact info through the FBI website (
www.fbi.gov).
Lastly, I am not certain how the other poster's information was obtained, I am only speculating on how mine was, but if you applied for an on-line payday loan in the past this may be where your information was compromised. In your complaint I would referrence any on-line loans you may have had or applied for. This may be a common link where investigators can focus their investigation.
I will continue to check back with this site for any other CashNetUSA users. I would be interested to gather this info for my contacts with the task forces.
Nick D