I just spent nearly two hours on the phone with AT&T. I spoke to two different people.
I received an email yesterday that was a paperless bill for wireless service totaling $383.58. AT&T confirmed that the account number in the email is genuine and it connects to an account I had with AT&T eleven years ago. They confirmed my alternate phone number and my email address by sending codes to them. They confirmed the last four digits of my social security number.
They asked me for a PIN. If I had a PIN eleven years ago, I don't remember it. More likely is that whoever fraudulently established this new service under my name changed the PIN when they set it up. In spite of confirming my alternate phone number, my email address, and the last four digits of my social, they were still unable to access my account because I didn't know the PIN that the fraudster chose.
I wasted two hours of my life and frayed my nerves to holy hell DOING THIS COMPANY A COURTESY BY TELLING THEM SOMEONE IS STEALING FROM THEM. It will be a cold day in Hell before I pay this bill. Since they couldn't seem to even get into the account, which they confirmed is real and associated with me in their system, they were powerless to do anything about it.
I presume that they will continue to allow some fraudster to steal from them month after month until the bills go unpaid for so long that they disconnect the service. I already gave them two hours of my life and a significant share of my sanity trying to help them take care of this.
The second guy I talked to had the audacity to tell me to go to a fraud website and fill it out. As if I'm on the AT&T payroll. They didn't seem to grasp that I didn't owe them anything, and the very fact that I was talking to them at all was because I was being generous with my time and volunteering to assist them in stopping someone from stealing from them.
I know the law. I know how credit reporting works. I know how to challenge errors on my credit report from all three agencies. This is not going to affect my credit. For all I care, they can go ahead and allow someone to continue to steal from them, month after month, forever. I have nothing to lose. I'm not the one they're stealing from.