On June 11, 2004, Loïc receives a phone call from a bank branch in Toulouse, where he does not live. The beginning of a real hell for him, victim of several impersonations until February 2018. He told his ordeal to Olivier Delacroix on Europe 1, Tuesday.
"I was called by a bank in Toulouse who told me that a person had come to his agency, with identity papers in my name, to transfer my accounts from the Loire to the Haute-Garonne. At the time, I thought it was a scam, it still seemed a bit ubiquitous ... And then the person told me: you have such a name, you were born in such a place ... I told myself that There was something weird about it, I filed a complaint and there was an internal investigation by the bank, for which I was summoned.
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[In total] there were five people posing as me. The first person was made papers in my name in 2001 and the case ended for me in February 2018. For 17 years, as the case grew, I I had more and more problems with the administrations, the banks and the bailiffs.
"I never knew where it went"
In my case, they opened 17 bank accounts, ten phone lines, consumer loans, in addition to problems with the Social Security and the Caf. The taxes fell on me and I had to prove that I was not them, and that was painstaking because the only things that taxes look at are the surname, the first name, the place and the date of the tax. birth. Since the only difference I had with them was my skin color, it was very difficult to prove that I was not the author of all that could be blamed.
I never knew where it went. I only saw one usurper a few years ago at a hearing. I had companies that were damning me for wages absolutely false, because I did not live on Toulouse at all. So I asked the businesses I was supposed to work for, and that's how I managed to get an address. [Before meeting him] I was anxious because I was going to be able to put a face to one of my usurpers. But when I saw it, it was mostly hatred that came out.
Always followed at the psychiatric level
At first, justice did not do much. There was certainly an instruction, but in my opinion it was not conducted as it should have been. When you give the address of that person and we wait a year and a half to search, I find it limited ... The person intercepted took only 19 months of suspended sentence. I had 3,000 euros in damages for 17 years of my life. 17 years is a long time. It destroys a life.
Of course, it had a significant psychological impact. You can see that as a kind of rape, because you're being charged with things and it's really an appropriation of your life by others. It was very complicated because I had projects. I could not do what I wanted, judge of instruction, because I could not go to the end of my studies of law and political science. To get back on track, it's complicated. Currently, I am being followed at the psychiatric level, I have an important drug treatment. "
How to limit the risks?
"I do not know if we can protect ourselves," says Loïc, who takes precautions not to relive the same mishaps. In order to "avoid traces", he "burns the important papers" and "leaves nothing in the trash". Securing your personal email with sophisticated passwords is essential to avoid seeing your email box hacked. Finally, you should never send identity and administrative documents to third parties on merchant sites. "The pieces can be used to make a piece of identification, a passport or a birth certificate request," said Dalila Jacqueline Bouhezila, president of the association "We stole my identity".
And what if you find an identity theft?
Dalila Jacqueline Bouhezila advises first to file a complaint that will "block the identity". "Justice will declare the person as a victim" and it will return "to the shops to turn against the instigators" of identity theft, in the case of commercial fraud. She also invites to make a letter of contestation with a photocopy of the receipt of the filing of complaint.