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Comment by thecapybara | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a lawyer, but I'd imagine that claiming that for cards that are legitimately yours would be considered fraud and would probably land you in more hot water than the initial debt would.

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The trick is you just turn it around. Don't claim the debt is not yours. Simply demand proof that it is.

It's only fraud if there's evidence showing you took out the debt. :)

Do you really think it's that easy? Any junior investigator could examine the purchases and tie them to you. If the card was really opened fraudulently it would be easy to show that the goods were shipped somewhere completely isolated from the cardholder.

It's not that easy when there's 2 or 3 degrees of separation between the source of debt and the collector. And also, what collections agency is going to go through that sort of trouble unless it's for maybe tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars?

You don't think is possible to have an accomplice to ship the goods too? PO box under a fraudulent ID? Ship to random locations and pick it up before the home owner gets it?

> Any junior investigator could examine the purchases and tie them to you

That'd be evidence if it can be tied to the original debtor, no?

I wrote my comment on the premise that "why can't a cardholder lie and claim they never accrued the debt [on a specific card]". If an investigator analyzes all purchases from the card and finds many of the purchases were things you took possession of, or hotels you stayed at, etc, that's evidence against the liar who falsely claimed to be a victim of so-called 'identity theft'. It's very hard to launder purchases without some trail leading back to you.

by the time it gets sold once and you are 5 years in, the evidence is vapor. if its tied to assets, or large enough, they will come for them tho because bounties.

Of course, but there are plenty of people who are willing to risk committing crimes if it benefits them financially.

I’m not sure specifically what context we’re talking about. In court, sure. Talking to debt collectors? They aren’t the police, in the very least you aren’t under any obligation to answer any questions you don’t want to, right?

I don’t recall, I’d have to look in my records, why don’t you send me whatever proof you have and I’ll if I can find anything?

These are pretty slimy businesses, they should be treated as such.

> I’m not sure specifically what context we’re talking about. In court, sure. Talking to debt collectors? They aren’t the police, in the very least you aren’t under any obligation to answer any questions you don’t want to, right?

As far as the question of if something is or isn't fraud, why would the context matter? As far as I know fraud has nothing to do with perjury or being under oath. If you intentionally lie to a debt collector in order to get out of a legitimate debt, I think that would fit the definition of fraud.

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