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This happened a while ago, but I still don't know how the scam was supposed to work.

Someone opened a Fingerhut account in my name and had an air conditioning wall-unit shipped to me. Fortunately, I didn't open the box, and after doing some research, I refused delivery.

I suspect that somehow Fingerhut was involved, maybe an employee working on commission was hoping that maybe I wouldn't want to pay for the shipping to return it.

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  • Was your credit card charged?
    – RonJohn
    Commented Jul 4, 2019 at 19:46
  • 1
    @RonJohn - No, it was a new Fingerhut account through a bank that they deal with. So, of course, a few days later I received a statement with a minimum payment due. Then, since I refused delivery, the account was credited and I had zero balance. I still had to convince them to close the account.
    – Mattman944
    Commented Jul 4, 2019 at 20:00
  • Maybe something like the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wells_Fargo_account_fraud_scandal
    – RonJohn
    Commented Jul 4, 2019 at 20:35
  • Also, see the recent question money.stackexchange.com/questions/110824/…
    – RonJohn
    Commented Jul 4, 2019 at 20:51

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It's possible it was a local who hoped to pluck it off your doorstep and get a free air conditioner... but you beat him to it.

You may want to contact Fingerhut credit and find out just how much personal information was given to them on the credit application. If Fingerhut gave this person credit solely on street address and birthday, that's not so alarming. But if they also had your SSN, that'd be a big problem!

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  • Possible, but there are many easier targets, my neighborhood has plenty of retired people, so neighbors are home. And, you need to go through a decorative iron gate to get to my front door. Yes, my SSN was stolen. There was an unsuccessful IRS scam (IRS caught it), and dozens of fraudulent credit card and other credit attempts. A fraud alert was placed with the credit bureaus after the Fingerhut scam. This has worked fairly well, although a few were stupid enough to give credit anyway. These weren't hard to resolve.
    – Mattman944
    Commented Jul 4, 2019 at 23:52

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