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hey everybody Joshua Byrne guard here with the buzzer real estate team and thank you for tuning into this episode I'm here with Jim Smith everybody Jim tell them a little bit about your he's an attorney but your specialty so I work for a company that I created called the Fair Credit attorneys and what we spend most of our time doing is helping people fix errors on their credit reports or tenant screening reports or employment background checks so two reasons one he's a friend of mine but also I am in a position as you're watching this my credit and identity was stolen there has been at least nine inquiries there's been three successful open accounts and at the same time as I'm going through is you guys are investing and doing things I'm trying to buy real estate and the bankers are going to hold this against me hence why I called upon Jim and how I feel as though you're aid thus far and I'm only in the first one two and a half weeks of getting things fixed and getting them ready is apparent because it's happening all over the world and for me I was always saying it's not gonna happen to me I watch my credit I know what's going on and lo and behold Here I am in this position unfortunately so I would love for you to talk about first of all preventive if there is any okay sure also please sure so a couple of things to identity theft is a big problem I think something like 500 million people's identities are stolen Wow so it's it's it's a rampant issue it's a big deal and it can happen to anybody it doesn't matter your age it doesn't matter your socioeconomic background it doesn't nothing matters it can happen to any of us at any time yeah so what can you do to prevent it from happening and something that you did Josh or Joshua yeah something that you did which was awesome was you right away put his secure a freeze on your credit reports so you called them up each of the three major credit reporting agencies and you put a Riis and your credit report right so that's step number one that could prevent a lot of fraudulent activity from happening in the first place so that's a great thing to do however if you do do that you have to be on top of things because what that means is if you're in the department store and they offer you the store credit percent off you know it's Christmas season right now and you're going you've got a thousand dollars worth of stuff you're gonna buy for your family members and they say looky you know you can save thirty percent if you just apply for this store credit card if you've got a freeze and your credit reports you won't be able to instantaneously qualify for that card instead you're gonna have to get out of line you're gonna have to call the credit reporting agencies use your very long password that they gave you and unfreeze it temporarily so that you can apply for that credit card so it's it takes a matter of minutes but sometimes when you're busy and you're standing in line it seems like it's a long time to get it good to get that done but that's really the biggest inconvenience and the flipside anybody else who's trying to use your identity and private information to steal your stuff they can't do it if it if there's a freeze on your credit report okay alright so it's a very important first step if say you didn't do that so if your example you learned that somebody was in middle of trying to steal or open an account in your name was that right right yeah so target called me was my only red flag target called me and asked me to verify some information I asked him what are you talking about why you're calling me and that was it and I was like okay so yeah we have everything but your address and I was like oh my goodness please cancel okay okay so then you get that phone call you freak out and so part of what I do is if you know that I'm out there you can reach me and I can walk you through the next steps and sort of calm you down and we can sort of draw a circle around the problem and the way you draw a circle around the problem is you pull your credit reports so that's very important to do if you're a victim of identity theft you want to put the freeze on your credit reports but then you want to pull them to see well maybe this isn't the first time somebody's actually been a to steal my identity maybe they've tried in the past and your example is a good one because that that did happen so Josh called me and with while we're on the phone together he went to annualcreditreport.com which is a good safe place to get your free credit report as long as you haven't pulled it within the last 12 months right and worked it worked hailer and it worked and he was able to look at we looked at two of them together on the phone within a matter of minutes and Josh went through my item by item and sure enough he saw a couple of problems first thing he saw was a couple of addresses that didn't belong to you right yeah so that's an indication that somebody in this case was out of state I think somebody out of state was using some other address that Josh never lived in that's a big red flag and then he went through the rest of his credit report and he found sure enough three different accounts had already been open yeah so it's this person whoever they are already opened three accounts in Josh's name and then we went further and it's also important that the section of the credit report called hard inquiries because those impact your credit score and there were a number of them yeah maybe nine there was something like that nine so nine Hardin card credit inquiries which means this person was successful in opening three of the accounts but tried several other times and maybe it didn't work so you do that so now what so you go through you go through the credit report so you can now draw a circle around all of the problems so now you have to start contacting the credit reporting agencies to get them to remove those fraudulent accounts which is something that I could do for free as part of my service so what I'll help with you with you Josh is I'll help you put together a declaration that will be signed by you under penalty of perjury that you're telling the truth will identify the fraudulent accounts will identify the hard inquiries and you'll state in your declaration that you didn't authorize anybody to open these you didn't know about it you didn't benefit from the services and you'll sign it we'll send it off to all three credit reporting agencies and demand that they remove them and hopefully within 30 days you could respond saying loud and clear Josh we got everything's removed and then you can move on purchases with more purchases your credit score will be back up to where it should be and you you know you'd be the sort of the credit risk that is accurate if it doesn't happen if they come back and say no we checked with the the furniture of that information and we think this it really was you that's where me as an attorney can really help out there's a federal law called the Fair Credit Reporting Act and under that law I can help people for free so you if if we do this dispute process and the credit reporting agencies don't correct your information with your permission we could file a lawsuit I front all of the costs so it's you know $400 filing complaint I will pay to serve the defendants and then I litigate the case all without you having to pay me anything and that's all because of the way the Fair Credit Reporting Act was created if ultimately we have a successful settlement or where you can go further than that and go to trial which most of these don't go to trial but say we have a successful settlement I get paid my attorney's fees directly from the people we sue so that no money's coming out of your pocket and a portion of this process whether you and me are talking over the phone or any other potential client talking on the phone about the what's going on that's all free the dispute letter process that we talked about that's all complimentary and if it works and you go about your day that's great I'm not going to send you a bill for all the work I do so I get paid only if the lawsuit is necessary and and we try for it not to be necessary and I get paid by the people we sue yeah so it's really is I think it's I think it's a good service that we can give people something that I'm very proud of and very comfortable talking with people because I think it's a good thing I mean how we started and why he's really again a good friend of mine who's networking is because there are clients of mine even trying to rent an apartment let's go as far back is that rent by cell and when we tried to put them in somewhere as we discuss if anything on their credit wasn't them and you fight it yeah the idea is that you as the individual out there that are being hurt by you can't move into somewhere else or you're stuck in your house you guys to keep renting from somebody realize in essence you will get paid because you went to lawsuit you will get paid for pain and suffering of not being able to move or not be able to go where you really wanted to and that's really how we started their church it was their clients of mine that couldn't couldn't get into somewhere because of their credit they're like it wasn't me yeah so that's a big part of it too so if a lawsuit is necessary and it can happen when you're trying to buy a house it can happen when you're trying to rent to an apartment it could happen when you're applying for a new job and they do an employment background check Wow so if errors on your credit reports errors on a tenant screening report or errors on an employment background check are preventing you from moving on in life whether it's a new job a new apartment or a new house those are real damages concrete damages you know that a tenant screening report as an example you going through the process every found the location you're ready to you know get an apartment pay two thousand dollars a month whatever the case may be and it's deny and now you're homeless so now you're living with your sister or your brother your mom your dad or whomever a friend you're homeless that's a real that's a real damage and the law is clear that emotional distress is something you can collect on so these are also not only my attorneys fees covered from the from the people we sue they'll also pay for your damages which can be in the tens of thousands of dollars depending on the situation it's awesome well listen guys this information is coming up right after this thank you again Jim for coming thank you try sharing your goodwill and your process again we'll see you next time bye guys [Music]