Bruce Cordell


Over the last several months I've been getting unsettling phone messages. A couple from a bank on the Isle of Man asking after some account I had opened (which was strange, as I hadn't opened one), and dozens from what turned out to be a collection agency coming after me for credit card debt (from cards I've never owned).

After checking my credit at three different credit agencies, I breathed a sigh of relief. It apparently wasn't identity theft. No one had gotten a hold of my social security number and posed as me successfully enough to get credit in my name.

But yet I was getting these messages from a collection agency, looking for Bruce Cordell. I finally called back to set matters straight. The thing is, the guy at the other end of the line wouldn't believe my claim he had the wrong phone number; the wrong Bruce Cordell. Moreover, he talked over me, wouldn't let met speak, and threatened a couple times to 'send the sheriff out to my house.'

To which I responded, now totally pissed, "Why don't you?! You haven't the faintest idea where I really live because I'm not the person you think I am!"

After daring him to sic the law on me a few more times, I calmed down, and finally got him to reveal the last 4 of the social security he thought was mine, and an address. Of course neither matched my own. I think I finally convinced the thoroughly unpleasant fellow to stop harassing me with messages meant for a deadbeat who shared my first and last name (but not my middle, thankfully).

Still, it is strange knowing somewhere roams another Bruce Cordell running just ahead of a series of debts and shady off-shore bank shenanigans. Unless this OTHER Bruce Cordell is the one whose identity was stolen...?

UPDATE: Nope, I guess harassing phone messages from Apex are still the order of the day--one was waiting for me when I got home. Hmm, looks like I shall have to begin plotting their dissolution.


Posted: Tue - May 30, 2006 at 05:18 PM          

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