I got a call from a consulting agency doing a background check on me for an apartment I applied for in Portland, and apparently an eviction came up in Salem. Having been to Salem maybe once or twice in my life on a train, I am fairly confident that it's not me, and possibly someone with the same name. However, the consulting agency couldn't seem to get anywhere with the apartment complex to see if it's actually me or someone else with the same name or what, so they called me to tell me what's going on and asked if I could try and get somewhere.

So I called and talked to them for a while and came up with about the same thing as the consulting agency (the apartment told me to go to the court because they can't give out any information about tenants, nor would they let me tell them the last four of my SSN or birth date or something and they can say yes or no and then it'd be done, because I don't know if it's someone with the same name as me, or if it's someone who is using my identity or what). So what I was told to do is, like I said, go to the court. But, along with living several hundred miles away (in north Idaho), I have no idea what I'm supposed to be getting, and I'm kind of on a short deadline and don't have weeks to spend trying to find out who it is that is coming up on my background check. Do I need some kind of a court order to make the complex give me or the consulting agency information so I can prove that I never lived there? No one seems to have any idea what to do, and I'm guessing it isn't normal for the consulting agency to call the people they're checking and asking for help so I'm assuming this doesn't happen very often.

Has anyone ever seen something similar? I need to get this done as I need to move for school pretty soon.

The first thing I would do would be to get a credit report done. You can get one online. If there is an eviction in your name, it will show on your credit report. Have you browsed through the information in LawInfo's Free Legal Resource Center to learn more about your issue yet? See: http://www.lawinfo.com/consumer.html and http://resources.lawinfo.com/en/index.html. You can certainly try to speak to a lawyer to determine what legal options may be available. In the meantime, you may be able to learn more on your own. Search the "Free Legal Resources" tab, or browse the Consumer Resources. Good luck.