Unauthorized usage by family member

I need some advice on this. About 7 years ago I got a CC for myself and put my mom on the account as an authorized user. I was in college and she paid many of my bills anyway so I never thought twice about it. Well, I haven't used the card in over 5 years. I don't even have the card anymore. My mother hasn't used it in quite a while either. But apparently my step-father got hold of it and ran up a balance of $26k on a $20k limit. He was never authorized to use this card. Now he can't make the payments and I'm getting calls from the Bank's collections people. My credit has tanked from over 760 to below 650. Like an idiot, I freaked out and canceled the card when I found out, but when I thought better of it an hour later, I called back to tell them not to cancel the card but it was too late. So now my credit is probably worse than 650. My credit has been ruined because of unauthorized charges.

What can I do? Ideally, I'd like to have the charges taken off my name and transferred to my step-dad's. Should I tell the bank that the charges were unauthorized? Would it even matter at this point? I don't want any criminal action taken, I just want them to go after him and not me. And I'm fairly certain that both my mother and my step father would corroborate my story.

So nobody knows what would happen if I told the CC company that those charges were unauthorized? Would my family member be subject to criminal charges?

[Jeanie]

I am not sure what CC this is but, all of the ones I know would help you with this kind of issue. They would/should investigate it. I am pretty sure the unauthorized person would be subject to some kind of criminal charges/actions. i have never had to but, you can always see if you can hand over the CC in their name and such fully without you being responsible but, I am not even sure you can do that with a remaining balance unless you get it proved that it was him who made the charges. If I were you I would seek a lawyers advice asap! A consultation from one is usually free..

Good Luck..

~Jeanie

Thanks Jeanie. Sounds like I better leave it alone and let him pay it off, however long that takes. Regardless of how wrong it was, I'm not going to subject him to any criminal action, that just wouldn't be right, he's done a lot for me in the past. I don't want to turn a family issue into a criminal/legal issue.