This title is misleading. it isnt clear from the article if all of the victim's mail was re-addressed or only some of her credit accounts. changing address on an existing credit account for the purpose of stealing the credit is possible if the perpetrator has indeed stolen other mail or documents which can verify the previous address and if the perpetrator has created an identity at the new address.
What they often do is make the change of address for one of the adults in the house, like the husband. That way mail is still coming in and it is less likely to be noticed that some is missing. Meanwhile, what mail is being diverted is being used against you.
The change of address "service" from the post office is a way for them to sell your info to junk mailers. I didn't use it when I moved and saw quite a drop in junk mail at my new residence.
Now if i could just figure out how to stop the post office from cramming in those newspaper-type ads, they'd stop smashing my real mail.
I went round and round with my local DMV office a few years back.
I didn't get the renewal card in the mail for my truck. I called the local office and asked where it was. They said it had been mailed. I said I never got it. I then asked where they mailed it to. They said someplace in D.C.
I said how in the heck did the address get changed. They said somebody must have made a mistake. I asked to have it changed back but they couldn't do it. They said address changes had to be made in person. I said again how did you change it in the first place. Sucked in.
I was lost in the Zone of Government workers, stuck in a circular conversation with no end, unable to convince them to just hit a key and change things back.
My PO Box of many years was hijacked by someone I knew and it took darn near an act of Congress to get it back, believe it or not, so I know how easily it can happen.
The person was a hobby club "rival" of mine who hated me for some reason and decided she would divert all the mail from my box to herself! She is an IRS agent, no less. She went to my little suburban post office, rented a box right next to mine and forwarded ALL of my mail (not just the doll club mail--this was my primary mailing address for all my business and personal mail, plus bills, for 7 years at the time!) to her new box number.
It was over a week before I caught on about not getting any mail. Just thought I wasn't getting much for some reason. I went to my postmaster and found out what had happened when they pulled the forwarding order.
It didn't end there, however! They decided that the MAIL in question (ALL addressed to ME, personally) was "in dispute" and it would take a higher-up postmaster to get my mail back and give it to me. Mind you, this other person had never been a customer of this post office before that week and I had been for 7 years--she didn't even live in this suburb, but many miles away! Didn't matter to them at all. In fact, the postmistress YELLED at me!
The only lucky thing for me was that they had held all my mail that didn't have the doll club address on it, so I did get my own real business and personal mail back - but not the hobby stuff addressed to me. The same witch tried to close down my club bank accounts, too - but the bankers were smarter than the post office and headed her off at the pass.
IRS agents think they can just do anything personally they want to anyone else. It's very scary. She sent an attorney to one of our club meetings to videotape it and then had "papers" served on me in front of everyone to make it look like I had done something wrong. Same papers were sent by mail and hand-delivered at my home. They said I was to "cease and desist" TALKING about this woman, which was not something I had ever done to begin with.
Turned out, she was wiretapping the office phone of a friend I talked with on occasion (he worked in a former IRS office building!) AND had a minion listening in on my cordless and cell phone from nearby my house, with a police scanner! I've used land lines ever since then. All I could do was file a complaint about her to an IRS whistleblower who was gathering such stories - but I never heard another thing back.