Dell deletes CO, but now CA is after me

[Jess1120]

I've been having problems with a Dell Financial Services account I opened about five years ago for the last two years. To make it fairly short, I had a $1,500 limit and I purchased a printer and ink for a total of around $300. I never used the account again and made the same payment every month (without checking the statements because the minimum amount due never changed)

Apparently somebody charged a $700 computer and a few other things to my account, and I was not even aware of this until I started receiving calls from DFS that I was no longer making my minimum payments (which obviously went way up)

I didn't know a thing about credit, CA's etc back then (thank God for this site!) so i didn't do anything about it other than to tell them I hadn't made the charges.

Two years later (and after a CO from Dell on my account...along with a "lost/stolen credit card" TL) Dell has finally deleted the account from my CRs. But a week later, I received a collection letter from Midland Credit Management offering a settlement on the account...which BTW, is up to $2,752...all from interest and charges!! They want me to do a settlement of $1,651, which I think is ridiculous because I never made the charges in the first place!

I should have filed a police report, but again, I was an idiot back then and didn't know what to do about it. Can I still file a report now? I already have fraud alerts on my CRs. My first thought is to send them a letter disputing the debt, explaining the fraud etc... but I'm not sure this is a good move. To make matters worse... my husband and I are right in the middle of buying our first home (just got loan approval last week) and escrow won't close until March when the house is built. If they end up reporting the collection, we'll probably lose the loan

Can somebody offer some advice?

Thanks

[swirlgirl]

When was the $700 charge made and when did you become aware of the fraudulent charges? Do a search at www.ftc.gov on identity theft. If you can get proper identity theft documentation, the CA will most likely drop the debt.

[1time2many]

You might want to also check to see where the order was sent to and do some checking from there.

[Jess1120]

I've tried to get information from Dell... but they can't even tell me what the charges were for..only the amounts. Since it was $700... I'm assuming it was a computer (considering it's Dell and back then they weren't selling TVs). I didn't become aware of it until 4 or 5 months after they were made. I checked with the FTC, and that's where it said I would need to file a police report. I tried to file a complaint against Dell a while back, but the online form would not go through after three tries, so I got frustrated and forgot the whole thing.

Dell is entirely unhelpful, but I'm more worried about the CA now...especially since it's not out of SOL for two more years. April 09 makes four years since the original CO by Dell. I'm worried if I press it with the CA, they'll sue me for the balance and I have no way to prove it's not my debt