Are CPNs Legal? What You Need to Know
Build strong credit
while you save
Improving your credit score can be challenging, especially when you’re trying to rebuild it after making some mistakes. As a result, you may find it tempting to take a shortcut by purchasing a CPN.
Unfortunately, that’s always a bad idea. Let’s explore what you need to know about CPNs, including how they work, why you should avoid them, and what to do to improve your credit instead of buying one.
What Are CPNs?
CPN stands for credit privacy number, credit profile number, or credit protection number. It’s a nine-digit number formatted like a Social Security Number (SSN) that scam artists sell to people with bad credit.
These CPN vendors say to supply the CPN instead of your original SSN when you apply for accounts. When your prospective lender or card issuer uses it to pull your credit report and check your score, they won’t see any mistakes you may have made.
CPN vendors often also encourage you to change other personal details on your application, such as your telephone number and mailing address, to prevent creditors from connecting your new identity with your original one.
If everything goes according to plan, that lets you open new credit accounts despite any missed payments, account defaults, or bankruptcies in your credit history. You’d have a second chance to build a credit profile from scratch.
Are They Legal?
CPNs are definitely illegal, no matter what your credit repair company says. CPN vendors typically try to convince you that they’re a legitimate tool for privacy and approved by the Social Security Administration, but they’re just false identities.
They’ll claim that the Privacy Act of 1974 legalizes CPNs, but it only states that the government can’t deny you legal privileges for refusing to disclose your SSN. That doesn’t make it legal to use a different SSN to defraud lenders or credit card companies.
In fact, CPNs are often actual SSNs that scam artists have managed to steal from other people. They target consumers who aren’t using their SSN for one reason or another, so you raise fewer red flags when you try to pass the number off as your own.
For example, CPNs are frequently SSNs that belong to young children who haven’t had a chance to establish a credit history with the credit reporting agencies yet. They may also belong to senior citizens, prison inmates, or even the deceased.
Can You Go to Jail for Using a CPN?
Using a CPN to deceive creditors into giving you financing you don’t deserve constitutes multiple crimes. They’re all punishable with fines and potentially even jail time, though the actual sentence depends on the circumstances.
First, lying about your creditworthiness on a loan or credit card application constitutes fraud. Whether you artificially inflate your income or lie about your current debt amounts, you’re falsifying information to defraud the creditor out of money.
They would have been less willing to give you financing if they knew you were a high-risk borrower. Therefore, your crime is exposing them to financial risk they didn’t agree to or causing them to suffer actual losses without fair warning.
Second, attempting to pass someone else’s SSN off as your own constitutes identity theft. Even though you bought the CPN for credit purposes instead of stealing it directly, you still committed a crime. Not knowing that it was someone’s SSN may not save you.
The punishments for fraud and identity theft can vary significantly. The maximum sentence depends on whether they prosecute you for a misdemeanor or a felony and whether it’s a state or federal crime.
Fines are a more likely punishment for unknowingly using a CPN, but there have been multiple cases where the defendants received jail time.
For example, Calvin Wayne Cade, Jr. got 18 months in prison for using CPNs on multiple credit applications. Michael Fort received seven years for using what he thought was a legal CPN to lease a car, though an appeal reduced it to two years.
How To Avoid CPN Scams
Falling for a CPN scam has disastrous repercussions, especially if you use your newly generated identity to open multiple credit accounts you’re not qualified for and default on them. As a result, it’s essential that you learn to avoid them.
Fortunately, that’s usually pretty simple. Just know CPNs are stolen SSNs, and using one to create a new credit file and lie on a credit application constitutes synthetic identity fraud, which is highly illegal and punishable by federal law.
There’s no legal way to replace your SSN. Generally, the only official identification numbers a consumer may need to request are a Taxpayer Identification Number or an Employer Identification Number.
However, these numbers come straight from the Internal Revenue Service, and neither is a direct substitute for your SSN.
With that in mind, avoid getting anything that resembles a secondary credit number from anyone but the government. And when you apply for new credit accounts, ensure everything on your application is accurate to the best of your ability, including your SSN.
Do CPNs Actually Help With Building Credit?
CPNs don’t do anything to help you build credit under your original identity. Purchasing one won’t change the history in your original credit reports, nor will it let you improve your credit score any faster.
However, CPNs aren’t supposed to do that. Instead, they help you falsify a new identity using your name, a fake address, and someone else’s SSN. That way, you can build a second credit profile from scratch.
However, opening credit accounts with a CPN is often still harder than with your SSN. Creditors have fraud prevention procedures to help them identify problematic applications and avoid lending to CPN users.
And, of course, you won’t be able to keep the scam going for very long after the first financial institution catches you. As a result, you’re always better off building credit through legitimate means than purchasing a CPN.
What To Do Instead To Build Credit
If you’re interested in using a CPN to get a fresh start with credit, you probably have a bad credit history. Rebuilding a damaged score can be more challenging than starting from scratch, but it’s not impossible.
Before you do anything else, take the time to learn how the credit scoring system works. Once you know the different types of credit scores and how they’re calculated, it’ll be much easier to navigate the credit repair process.
When you’re ready to begin, deal with the debts currently damaging your credit. That includes any credit card with a high credit utilization ratio and any account in delinquency or default.
Focus on getting all of those debts back in good standing. Catch up on any that you’re behind on, then pay down your credit cards until their balances are between 1% and 10% of their credit limits.
That process will require working on your finances to free up cash flow. It’s easiest to tighten your budget, but you may have to pick up a side hustle or search for a higher-paying job if there’s no feasible way to reduce your spending.
With your existing debts under control, you can consider opening up new ones to diversify your credit mix, if necessary. Generally, you want three revolving accounts and at least one installment loan to optimize your score.
Once you have a complete set of credit accounts, make all your monthly payments on time. That’s worth 35% of your FICO score, making it the most important scoring factor.
If you have poor credit, you may struggle to open the accounts you need to repair your score. Fortunately, you can get both types of debt from CreditStrong without having to undergo a credit check thanks to Revolv, Instal, and other CreditStrong products.
Try one today to start building credit!
CreditStrong helps improve your credit and can positively impact the factors that determine 90% of your FICO score.