'I'm pretty sure my boss stole my identity. I was written up when I confronted him about it.' UPDATED

"I'm pretty sure my boss stole my identity. There are 2 new credit cards on my credit report with a total balance of about $15,000. My credit score dropped from 805 to 550. I was written up when I confronted him about it."

I work for a relatively small business, there's only about 50 of us, and I've been working here for about three years. The owner of the business I know has been stressed out over the financials for the last 6 months, we've gone from fairly profitable to slightly unprofitable since December.

Since I've worked here, I can think of one 2 month span of time that the business hasn't been profitable, but even then we were only down a couple thousand dollars total on that second month. Back in January, we had our worst month since I've worked here and it only improved slightly in February. The credit cards on my credit report were opened in February and looked to have been maxed out by March.

Fast forward to last week and my boss, the owner of the company, is out of the office for a day and a coworker grabbed the mail. It had a Discover bill with my name on it. She gave it to me and I was extremely confused, it was definitely my name but the company's address WITH the suite designated solely for the boss. Open it up and I found out "I" owed more than $10,000 and "my" payment was 2 months late.

I called Discover and they emailed me a description of the charges. About a dozen of them all with the heading of my company. It was clear someone ordered a card in my name and literally "paid" my company about $10,000 from it back in early March. Of course I was livid and immediately disputed all of the charges.

I checked my credit report and there was another card which seemed to have been open about the same time with more than a $5000 balance. I called that bank and they sent me the transaction list, same thing. At this point I was pretty sure it was my boss as I know he has access to my social security number from my hiring paperwork and the address to both cards was his suite in the building.

As I'm talking with my workgroup about it, someone else said they had their identity stolen in January but they got it taken care of through Transunion. They said the charges went to a supplier of ours. Turns out, there was a third employee in our workgroup of 5 who had their credit stolen at the start of the year when they checked their credit after hearing us talk about it.

For whatever reason, they are having that credit card company send them a statement as they couldn't email them the information. Last Wednesday, I confronted my boss about the credit cards and he denied everything. He said whoever it was probably just used the work address because they may have found it through my LinkedIn.

He also said to wait 120 days before disputing anything, which I found to be extremely weird, but that the credit card companies would take care of everything. I decided not to take his advice and disputed everything on the credit websites that day. Monday comes along and he calls me in asking if there was anything new on my credit since the other two talked to him about their issues as well.

I told him I disputed everything and he got pretty pissed. He was enraged that I disputed it so soon and said something that caught my attention: "So it was you who caused the holds!". I later found out the company's credit card merchant account is now on hold for fraud.

This morning, I get called in again and was given a written reprimand for "unsatisfactory performance" due to my lower sales numbers for last month (I've never gotten a written reprimand ever at this job) and a separate one for "unsatisfactory performance" for a recurring customer canceling their subscription because they went out of business.

I guess my question is where do I go from here? I feel a constructive dismissal coming on, if the company doesn't go out of business first. I'm also concerned about the credit card accounts as I haven't heard anything back yet when I disputed them.

Commenters weighed in:

GraceStrangerThanYou said:

1.) File a police report for identity theft.

2.) https://www.identitytheft.gov/

3.) Pack your stuff and start looking for a new job because that place is going under.

sbfb1 said:

This is not meant to sound like an ahole, but if someone stole from me and it was my company, I would file a police report immediately. I mean I would have taken that bill and went to the police and filed a report and then got an attorney, then I would post this wild story with an update that you sued him into Bolivia

Six weeks later, OP shared this update:

I no longer have a job. I received 3 more reprimands and was terminated last Friday. I went to the police a couple days after the OP. HOWEVER, 4 other employees also had their identity stolen in a similar way. We've all gone to the police and last Monday a detective showed up at the office. He only ended up staying about 10 minutes.

On Tuesday, someone else, who we think was an attorney, spent about the entire day in the boss' suite. On Friday, I was terminated and at least a dozen other people were laid off, including the others I know to have had their identities stolen. I'm going to take about a month to just chill before trying to find something else. I feel like I owe it to myself after the last 6 weeks at work.

One of the accounts is now off of my credit and I expect the other one to come off any day now. It sounds like they started coming off my coworkers' accounts as well.

I'm not sure what's going to happen from here but I hope my old boss gets whats coming to him. I'll start working on my resume next week and I'm going to file for unemployment, even though I know he's going to fight it. I'll keep checking out my credit daily as well to know for sure the other card is going to fall off.

In a comment, OP added:

Of the probably 14 people out of a job on Friday, I was literally the only one terminated, all the others were "laid off". I can't wait to testify against the jerk.