First, report the identity theft to local law enforcement authorities, including the police, postal inspectors, and the Secret Service.  Identity theft is a federal crime. 

Next, send a copy of the police report or other documentation to all banks and companies where your name has been used fraudulently.  Then, contact the fraud departments of the three major credit bureaus to get copies of your credit report and to have fraud flags and statements added to your reports.  The reports are usually issued for free if you have been the victim of credit fraud.  Click Here for Contact information for the three national credit repositories.

One in contact with each of them, request that they each have fraud alerts and statements added to your reports saying that all potential creditors should contact you to verify applications for new credit.  Ask the bureaus to clear the fraudulent accounts off your record.

You can’t stop creditors or collection agencies from suing you, but you can demand that they stop calling you. A collection agency cannot legally contact you at an unusual or inconvenient time or place. The agency cannot call before 8 a.m. and after 9 p.m., nor can it call you at work if it knows that your employer prohibits receiving collection calls on the job. If an agency calls you at work, tell the collector that your boss prohibits such calls.

Most debt collectors stop calling when you tell them to.  If they don’t, send a letter to both the collection agency and the original creditor demanding that the phone calls stop.  If that doesn’t work, contact your state’s Consumer Affairs Department to file a complaint and ask what to do next, or get a lawyer.  In fact, if you hire an attorney, a collector must deal directly with him.