((Brian's Note: This blog has been a long time in the making. In previous blogs, I have written about Iowa Public Television's Dan Wardell and the good work he does to promote reading and healthy eating for kids. Dan is one of my son Austin's heroes and I think he is a great guy as well. Dan is married with one child and...after working around his schedule and mine...here's Dan Wardell.))

 Last year, the day after Christmas, I discovered my wife was a criminal. You can imagine my shock and surprise when a bounty hunter showed up at my door to repossess the Dodge Durango my wife had purchased and was not paying for. This was especially peculiat since we didn't have the truck the bounty hunter was looking for and my wife didn't seem like the criminal type. We all had a laugh at the case of mistaken identity. Actually, the bounty hunter didn't really laugh; he just disappeared into the night.

 Two weeks later, I received a phone call on my cell phone from a second bounty hunter looking for a different vehicle my wife had supposedly purchased. It appeared these occurrences might not be mistaken identity after all.

 We immediately went online to check out our credit reports and mine popped up with no surprises. My wife's, however, couldn't even be accessed because the account had been flagged as highly delinquent. Hours later the police were at our house filling out an identity theft report and thus began our almost year-long battle trying to undo $200,000 work of fraudulent purchases made with my wife's Social Security number.

 That's right! $200,000! The villain never had any of our personal accounts or information. A single Social Security number was all she needed to buy vehicles, furniture, appliances, jewelry, cell phones and more.

 We soon discovered that getting these fraudulent claims off your credit isn't a "one phone call and it's done" kind of fix. It's a "wait on hold, leave a message with a robot, receive the paperwork in the mail, fill out the paperwork, get it notarized, send it back and then wait 30 days for the investigation to see if you're "cleared" kind of fix. We had to do this with over 30 different companies, easily spending more than 80 hours on the phone and half that time filling out paperwork.

 In most cases of identity theft, the villain never experiences the hammer of justice. In our case, however, the villain gets to spend at least two years in federal lock-up. The police caught her, she confessed and my wife's credit is almost the way it was before all the meddling. So keep that Social Security number close, check that credit report at least once a year and most importantly, always treat bounty hunters with respect.

((Brian's Note: Dan and his wife really went through the ringer on this and he shares both an important experience and important information so it doesn't happen to you. Can you imagine $200,000?))