I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as medical identity fraud, until I became a victim of it.  Many of the bills were already into collection before I found out they existed.  It seems that somebody used a fake id with my information to get medical services under my name, and then the bills obviously went unpaid and were destroying my credit rating without my knowledge.  Thankfully all of the fraudulent charges are being removed from my credit report so I won’t have to do anything as drastic as filing for personal bankruptcy.  I had wondered why, in the recent past, that I’d been turned down when applying for credit cards and when I tried to get a loan for a new car.  I had always paid my bills on time; I wasn’t behind on anything that I knew of.  After the fifth or sixth time I got turned down by a creditor, I requested to see a copy of my credit report.  That’s when I found all of the fraudulent charges.  I had never heard of such a thing but an investigator who was put in charge of my case told me that it happens to almost a quarter of a million people every year.  I’m just glad I caught it when I did, now I’ll be more aware of what to look out for so I can prevent this from happening again.