April 13, 2007

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  NEWS: Chinese ID Theft Victim Makes Help Tough

  John Chou is one of almost a million citizens in Singapore holding at least one credit card. Chou set a pretty bad example for his fellow card-holding consumers by discovering that he had been a victim of identity theft and not reporting it promptly, say police. Now, it is questionable how much help Chou can hope to obtain at this late stage of the game.
  
  Chou discovered that some $13,000 in jewelry purchases had been made using his credit, most likely by forging his signature to transactions made with cloned cards. But he travels on business a great deal, and couldn't fathom the headache of dealing with the problem, he claims – so he didn't alert authorities or creditors, and ignored the reminders and warnings of the increasingly delinquent accounts for which he was responsible. The problem came to a head recently when he realized that he faced court action due to the unpaid bill and had his home searched by court officials.
  
  Chou, who lives most of the year in China, spends up to a week three times a year in Singapore, but claims he was not in the country during the times that his card was being used there, during the latter half of 2004. It seems that Chou filed a single report in July of 2005 notifying an issuing bank of the activity, but the bank still demanded payment, he said. So he ignored the problem, hoping it would "go away." Chou claims that he was of the frame of mind that he didn't make the charges, so why should he pay them? Meanwhile, the $13,000 in purchases had ballooned with interest and fines to $24,000. Chou claimed that credit card matters were dealt with differently in China, and that his confusion regarding the matter had a great deal to do with the ensuing fiasco. Chou has begun to make installment payments to his creditors. He still claims his innocence, but stated that he was "unlucky" in the matter, and sees himself as having no choice but to pay up.
   
  
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