You did not open a Verizon account. Someone with your Social Security number did — financed a phone or two on it, ran up a bill, and disappeared, leaving the account, the device payments, and eventually a collection agency attached to your name. If that is where you are, the problem spans more than one company, and the Fair Credit Reporting Act gives you enforceable rights against each of them.
Where the fraud actually lands
The unpaid carrier balance becomes a charge-off and then a collection — and that collection lands on your Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion reports as if the debt were yours. The account history can also reach NCTUE, the telecom and utility exchange that most people never check and that a big-three credit freeze does not cover, where it raises deposit demands on your next legitimate application. The fraudulent application may add a hard inquiry, and the thief’s delivery address can lodge in your personal information — the early signature of a mixed credit file. Separate records, separate companies, and every one of them disputable.
Verizon’s own process — use it, and paper it
Verizon’s identity theft pages tell victims to start at the FTC’s IdentityTheft.gov to establish a recovery plan, and to file a fraud claim online for any Verizon account opened in your name — with a police report, which Verizon requires when identity theft involves its accounts. File the claim, keep every confirmation and reference number, and treat it as one front of several: the carrier closing the fraudulent account does not remove the collection from your credit reports, the entry from NCTUE, or the debt from a collector’s hands.
The federal rights that reach every copy of the fraud
The FTC Identity Theft Report is the key. Under FCRA Section 605B, a consumer reporting agency that receives your identity theft report, proof of identity, and a statement that the account is not yours must block the fraudulent information no later than four business days after receipt — and that command reaches the credit bureaus and specialty bureaus alike. Dispute the collection in writing per our credit dispute letter guide with the report attached; a collector on notice of fraud has its own federal duties, covered in our guide to collections that are not yours. The furnisher that keeps reporting a debt it has been told is identity theft is choosing a legal problem.
When it becomes a legal claim
If the fraudulent collection survived your documented dispute — or was blocked and reinserted, or the 605B block was refused — those are specific FCRA failures by specific companies, and the statute makes them compensable: actual damages for the denials, the deposits, and the hours, statutory and punitive damages where the violation is willful, and attorney’s fees, which is why we handle these cases on contingency through our identity theft practice. The same playbook covers a T-Mobile, AT&T, or Xfinity account opened in your name. You did not sign anything. The companies reporting otherwise answer to federal law.
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Richard Kim is rated 10.0 out of 10 on Avvo, with 35 client reviews averaging 5.0 out of 5 stars (as of September 2026) — read the reviews on Avvo. Admitted in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; available to appear pro hac vice in other federal courts. You pay nothing unless we win.
Published by The Kim Law Firm, LLC — about attorney Richard Kim. Last updated August 2026.