Sheldon Chrysler says his finances are in ruins since he became a victim of identity theft and a collection related to a DirecTV account in Detroit landed on his credit report.
Chrysler, who has never lived in Detroit, filed police reports and sent letters to DirecTV and the credit bureau Experian explaining that he was a victim. The 61-year-old Denver resident said his pleas went nowhere and his credit score plummeted.
“No one should have to go through this,” Chrysler said. “All I want is my good credit back and my chance to make a good living.”
Chrysler has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court that says DirecTV, the collection agency that DirecTV used and Experian are violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a federal law that says the agencies have a duty to clear the errors.
Hundreds of cases like Chrysler’s have been filed across the country in the past five years since identity-theft crimes became more frequent, said Robert Sola, an Oregon-based lawyer who specializes in the lawsuits.
“There are way more of these lawsuits than there were 10 years ago and more than five years ago,” Sola said.
Most of the lawsuits Sola has filed, including some in Colorado, are on behalf of consumers whose names and Social Security numbers have been erroneously mixed up with another person’s who has bad credit.
In 2002, Sola won the nation’s largest consumer-credit verdict — $5 million in punitive damages against TransUnion — for Judy Thomas, an Oregon woman whose information was mixed up with another woman’s who had atrocious credit. A judge later reduced the award to $1.3 million.
“There have been some compensatory awards that were $50,000 because the problems may have been on the credit report for a few months,” Sola said. “But when someone has been damaged for years and cannot get it fixed, the juries see that is significant.”
For some consumers, mistakes continue to appear on credit reports after they send documentation to creditors and the nation’s three credit bureaus indicating that they are victims.
“The system is built in such a way that it is near impossible for consumers themselves to fix it,” said Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates, a nonprofit consumer group. “It does require a lawyer to solve the problem, but there are not a lot of experts around the country who can build these cases.”
As a result of a poor credit score, Chrysler, a part-time teacher, is having trouble refinancing the adjustable rate on his commercial business property.
Robert Mercer, a spokesman for DirecTV said he could not address Chrysler’s lawsuit but said claims of identity theft are a concern to the company.
“If the claim is validated, we notify the claimant and the third party collection agency,” Mercer said. “And the collection agency requests tradeline deletions from the bureaus. As a result, we have few lawsuits like these.”
Calls to Experian about Chrysler’s lawsuit were not returned.
Chrysler’s attorney, Stephen Berken, said the credit companies and bureaus don’t want to put resources into correcting problems related to identity theft because it costs money to change their automated systems.
“They get sued so infrequently it is not worth it to them to have an accurate report,” Berken said. “They do not put the personnel behind this to make sure this is accurate because there’s only a few times they have to pay up.”
Felisa Cardona: 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com
