So I am still gainfully employed for now, working from home, and yesterday my manager emailed me saying that HR received an unemployment claim for me. She said she would take care of things on the company side and I should contact the Michigan unemployment agency and report the fraud.
So that’s what I did-- I submitted a fraud report via LEO - Unemployment Insurance Agency. Then I checked my credit report via creditkarma.com and everything looked good. My wife already has alerts set up with two of the major credit rating companies to alert us to any financial transaction that takes place in our names.
I’ve been told I should also file a police report. Not sure exactly how to go about that-- do I report it to the police dept. in my city or the city my branch is in? What else should I do? How worried should I be? I’ve been lucky to never have been the victim of identity theft before now. I’m hoping this is just a case of somebody getting ahold of an employee list without much other vital info and doing a fishing expedition with a lot of unemployment claims hoping a few will hit.
Look up the non-emergency number for your local police department, tell them what you’ve told us (who said to file a police report?) and just listen to their advice.
OK, I called my city’s police dept. They said an officer would call back to take my report.
I guess my main concern is, how compromised is my personal info? I said in my original post hopefully it was a fishing expedition with minimal info, but I imagine in order for a claim to successfully process to the point it’s submitted to my company, I assume they have at a minimum, in addition to my my name and company I work for, my SS# and correct address.
I put a freeze on all (four of) the credit rating companies. I consider it a minor inconvenience. The only time it becomes a problem is when you are looking for an apartment or a job (everyone wants to pull your credit history), then you unfreeze everything and freeze it when you are done. It is way less annoying than having to deal with identity theft. Personally, I think it should be the default.
Unless you love going into a department store and getting immediate credit, you should do it too.
Haha, yeah, I saw that thread in MPSIMS. It turns out that was NOT a fraudulent request though. I even briefly wondered if my issue could be an innocent mixup, since my name is not terribly uncommon, and I work for a large company. I don’t even get how the scam is supposed to work-- it hits a dead end if the employee is actually still employed, like me, and when I was actually unemployed a few years ago I had to jump through multiple hoops to get my benefits. I don’t get how a scammer can successfully game the unemployment system.