Tulsa Family Says Mail Theft Led To Identify Theft

<p>A Tulsa family says someone put their mail delivery on hold, and when the mail finally arrived, they realize someone stole their identity.</p>

Wednesday, February 15th 2017, 10:51 pm

By: News On 6


A Tulsa family says someone put their mail delivery on hold, and when the mail finally arrived, they realize someone stole their identity.

The Irvin family said it took them three days to realize someone was hijacking their mail, and identities, to apply for credit cards.

Rebecca and Richard Irvin knew something was wrong when the mail didn't come. Rebecca tracked down her mailman to find out someone with a bogus phone number put a hold on it.

"It's scary to think that somebody has your social security, your birthday and your whole address, and can go just hold your mail," she said.

It's easily done through the postal service's online form.

When the mail finally started coming back, Richard saw where the thieves used his identity to apply for store credit cards.

“Called the numbers on the back of the credit cards and found out that someone had been applying under my name. They had my name, my birth date, my social security number," he said. 

The Tulsa Police Department's Financial Crimes Unit has seen this before.

Corporal Matt Rose said, "Luckily, with this story, is the victim is smart enough to realize, 'Hey, my mail hasn't been delivered in the last couple days,' and made that initiation to stop her mail person and ask them, 'Hey, where's my mail?' We were lucky at this point."

Rebecca said this has happened to other families around her neighborhood.

“I think one of the things is people don't check their mail, or, they don't look at their mail, and if they don't get something for a couple of days they don't think anything about it," she said.

Police said the Postal Inspector is involved in the case.

Thankfully, the Irvin family caught the identity theft scheme before any major charges were run up.

You can find more information to better protect yourself here.

Inside this story at News On 6 dot com we have a link where you can take steps to better protect yourself.

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