Shit. I hope they didn't get any other information that could be used for identity theft. Good thing you can check your credit record now for free, to find out if anyone's been up to anything nefarious.

I know how you feel a little: someone used my emergency credit card's number to pay their match.com fees. Luckily it jumped right out at me and I was able to scream blue murder to Chase before it went particularly far.

CMONKEY SMASH!

Presumably there's some way you can challenge this through your bank? In the UK, the law is that if you didn't write the cheque, then it's a forgery and you're not responsible for it.

Whoah... H&R Block? Wouldn't this mean that they have all the perpetrator's actual info, then? (and if so, can we nominate this for a Darwin award in criminality?)

I was confused about that, too, taz. Why would anyone write a fake cheque to H&R Block, of all places? I need to file an "identity theft affadaivit" with the debt collectors, since they didn't try to draw money out of my actual account.

Whether or not someone has opened a bank account in my name remains to be discovered.

Geez, what suckage. If you can get a hold of this book: Bud Hibbs - Stop It - it might help keep the collector idiots off your back, hopefully.

You need to look at your credit report, pronto. Seems to me that it's highly likely this is identity theft and the bank account is "yours".

I worked for a tax prep service, and many of them -- H&R Block included -- don't give a shit about fraud as long as they get their money. They know people are defrauding the government or using their estranged spouse's nephew's teacher's dependents, or whatnot. But they can turn around a refund loan in a day and get you a cashier's check and you can go get it with a few easily-obtained false documents and be totally gone.

They might have a phone number which could be useful in tracing the person.

Yep, everyone should look at their credit reports regularly, even if they don't have any credit cards of their own.

You need to look at your credit report, pronto

I know :( I'm going to do that tomorrow along with calling my bank, which is the same bank that the account-that-is-apparently-mine-but-not-actually-mine belongs to. Yay!

They might have a phone number which could be useful in tracing the person.

I don't even know what state this H&R Block office is in; the woman at the processing company wouldn't tell me. All I have is an internal store ID number ("36230"), and that won't get me close to getting this fucker's phone number.

I'm sure H&R Block doesn't care about tax fraud, but it's still such a strange place for someone to pass forged cheques at. I mean, a jewelry store, an electronics store, a car dealership...that I could understand. But a CPA?