Do Not pass Go! Do not (try) to Collect $200.
Your Identity is probably stolen now and you are in for months, if not years, of TROUBLE!
I had an assistant almost 25 years ago whose identity was stolen. The bad guys created a whole new, fictitious “Alice Jones” person. As you say, the real “Alice’s” life was hell for many years, her credit rating destroyed, constantly hounded by collection agencies for payment, repo companies calling her and mailing. I’m not sure if she ever got it under control. Her life was just miserable.
You don’t hear these types of stories much any more. I think it must be too easy to steal a few hundred or thousand dollars on a stolen credit card and move on to the next card when the first is shut off.
I got a security alert email yesterday from my credit card bank about a $1 transaction at a gas station in Northern California. I called the CC issuing bank and they told me that the $1 seems to have been the way the merchant validated it was a real credit card. I don’t actually get charged the $1, only the immediately succeeding transaction for $56 for the fill-up. The security person I talked to thought this was all normal. Seemed weird to me.