Debt

A few months ago, i started receiving letters from a debt collection agency claiming I owed a lot of money on a credit card. I've never had an account with the credit card company in question, so I wrote both companies a letter stating this. The debt collection agency ignored my reasoning and continued to send several letters a week demanding (in increasingly stronger terms) immediate payment. I then recieved a letter from the credit card company stating that they did indeed have an account in my name, but this was probably a case of mistaken identity. I forwarded this letter to the debt collection agency and all of a sudden the letters stopped. They didn't even send an acknowledgement. Whether this is the end of the matter or not, I do not yet know, but what worries me is how this kind of situation can happen in the first place. I would not be surprised if there are people who are scared by the legal threats into paying the bill. The fact is, there is either another Keith Judge in the UK who owes this money, or (maybe more likely) someone has taken my details and opened an account in my name. How do you catch an identity fraudster who has pushed a credit card to its limit and then discarded it, probably many months or years ago? We live in a country where it is incredibly easy to borrow huge sums of money, and incredibly difficult for a lot of people to pay it back. When a company approves a loan, where does the money come from? I somehow doubt more than a fraction is backed up by any real assets, yet you must pay back every penny with interest through years of hard work. Even more worrying is that the billions of borrowed money is one of the key factors in propping up our current buoyant economy so I doubt the government would do anything drastic to stem this.