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...and then prepare for the FBI to show up at your door. You can't open a bank account without producing several pieces of ID bearing you current address. Not discounting the apparent stupidity of BofA relying on caller ID for auhthentication, but it's not quite that easy. Moving money from one account to another leaves a trail.

Still a really bad situation though.



Current address can change. The only reason my bank knows my current address is because I've repeatedly informed them, and it took about half a year and some effort from my side to have them update all accounts and records with the correct address. So the FBI has a good chance of scaring some innocent men living in a rental apartment that was used by some bad guy two years ago. In one place I lived, I regularly got payment demands from various credit companies to the name of somebody that (I suspect) lived there 2 years ago at least (I knew who lived there before me, and that wasn't the bad credit person). So address doesn't give much.


You can easily open up a bank account without ever interacting with a person- some banks, like ING Direct, are almost completely online.


It isn't too difficult to set up a bank account in someone else's name without them knowing. It happens with credit cards all the time.




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