Credit report falsely labels a woman a terrorist when she attempts to purchase a car.
Sandra Cortez went to buy a new car on her lunch break, and about an hour later, the Denver dealership staff was threatening to call the FBI to haul her away as a suspected terrorist.
The dealership's routine check of Cortez's credit report turned up something unusual on that day in 2005. It was an alert indicating that the woman was on a government list of suspected terrorists, international drug traffickers and others associated with weapons of mass destruction.
Cortez, now 68, was really just an accountant who wanted a new silver Subaru to better navigate the mountain roads she traveled to reach her favorite hiking trails.
The credit report Cortez had seen long before she walked into the dealership was clean. She had excellent credit, and she had no inkling that she was linked to a Colombian woman with a similar name wanted for drug trafficking. But like so many other consumers, Cortez didn't realize that the credit reports issued to businesses are not the same as those given to consumers.
The ordeal engulfed the grandmother for the next five years. Her many attempts to fix the problem with TransUnion and the federal government on her own all failed. Cortez pleaded with the credit-reporting agency to correct her credit history but received no help.
She eventually hired Jim Francis, a consumer-law attorney in Philadelphia, and sued TransUnion. Cortez endured a grueling legal battle that included a trial and years of appeals. She originally was awarded $750,000 by a jury, but that later was reduced to $150,000. And the government took about a third of it in taxes.
Officials for TransUnion's lobbying group, which speaks for the company on all matters, declined to comment on the case. Current owners of what was then the John Elway Subaru dealership were unfamiliar with the case and declined to comment.
http://www.ajc.com/business/car-buyer-mistaken-as-1478371.html
http://endthelie.com/2012/07/16/68-year-old-car-buyer-mistaken-for-terrorist-due-to-credit-report/#axzz20sWKWCb8