Suppose I created a company. Lets call it Bullshit Enterprises, LTD. Then my company reports to the credit bureau that I have an account will Bullshit Enterprises, LTD, and I have an excellent payment history with them. Would this be illegal?
Last I heard, fraud is illegal.
Exactly how is this fraud? They credit bureaus are not going to lose any money. If a potential creditor is mislead by the information in the credit file, isn’t that the credit bureaus fault? They are the ones who have to make sure the information in a credit file is correct.
I’m not sure about that - I think credit bureaus just report what is reported to them.
But anyway, if you defraud somebody through an intermediary or agent, it’s still fraud so far as I know. Both in the civil and criminal sense.
I think the critical point here is whether or you’re LYING.
If you really DO have a line of credit with a company you own and report it as such, I don’t see any fraud.
Heck, I work for a multi-national with a fancy holding-corp structure.
We probably have a couple thousand transactions per day between our various divisions, and quite a few between our various divisions and our partially-owned subsidiaries. I can’t see anything wrong with reporting those; in fact, disclosing outstanding balances on those trade lines, if anything, allows potential creditors to fully understand the company’s financials.
BTW, 100% correct on that.
If someone furnishes BS to a credit agency, the someone is responsible for the BS… even if you can PROVE something is BS to the credit agency, they’ll basically tell you that you need to take it up with the creditor/company in question.
Yes but arent the CB’s supposed to remove unverified information?
Heh.
Equifax: Bob’s used furniture store, Rumpleforeskin says he was never late on his payments. Is this true?
Bob: No, Rumpleforeskin was late on his payments.
Equifax: Rumpleforeskin, having investigated your dispute, we have determined that the tradeline in question is reporting properly. No changes will be made to your consumer report.
They don’t investigate the truth, they investigate what the reporters of the tradelines say. If the reporters are injuring you by means of incorrect statements, your recourse is with them.
If you have enough evidence, of course, I’m sure a lawyer could persuade a court to order that Equifax stop reporting a given tradeline, but by and large you’ll seek recourse against the creditor in question.
One of my co-workers actually successfully sued one of the credit reporting agencies when they… failed to report what his CREDITOR was reporting.
He cleared things up with the bank, the bank sent a letter to the CRA saying the tradeline was an accident, my friend sent a copy of the letter to the CRA as well, and the tradeline WOULD NOT come off, despite every reasonable effort on my friend’s part to resolve things amicably… this during a mortgage closing
As a result, he retained an attorney from Chicago specializing in this stuff and got a healthy check out of all this.