My wife is a teacher for the Irving Independant School District. In mid-November, we started to get a slew of credit cards in the mail from Best Buy, Sears, Office Depot, etc. We do not use credit, so this was a major concern.

We started digging into this accounts, and found out that someone had opened accounts online and make purchases of about $5000 at stores in Ft. Worth. Of course, we immediatly called up the creditors to alert them of the fraud and have the accounts closed. We also placed fraud alerts with the Credit Bureaus, and filed a report with the Irving PD. We were contacted by an officer the next day who had been assigned to the case, and had identified 7 other people all working for the IISD who had been similarly victimized.

Now, fast forward two months. A woman as been arrested in connection, and 28 district employees have been identified as victims. They actually found 4 false IDs on her person at the time of arrest. She said she found all the information in 3 binders that were thrown in the trash.

So my quesion is, what is the IISD's liability in this case, since it can be proven they handled critical information haphazardly? Should the 28 victims consult an attorney and possible file class action? While we are not being held personally responsible for the charges, it has taken hours upon hours of headache and hassle to get this resolved, not to mention the dread and anxiety. I also wonder if the financial institutions will charge liability against the IISD, since they are the source of the leak.

And, for anyone reading this, please take the time to monitor your credit report. It's also worth it to purchase ID theft insurance. It costs about $12/mo for my family, and they will take care of all the paperwork/calls/hassle if something does happen. I wish we had it before this mess started, but even so, they were very helpful with informing my wife what all needed to be done, even though they could not assume responsibility for the fraudulent accounts opened prior.

Monitor your children's credit reports. They are an easy target of fraud, since people don't think to monitor a child's credit. Fraud is not usually discovered until they turn 18 and start applying for school loans. It's actually not a bad idea to put a freeze on their credit now.

Here's hoping none of you ever have to deal with this.