Piggybacking Could land you in the Big House!

**Richard W. Beauchamp** · 09-19-2007, 09:33 PM

“Piggybacking,” it came, now it’s going

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, along comes “Piggybacking” as yet another gimmick if you will, that can allow the less than credit worthy to appear worthy. It’s called “piggybacking” because that is exactly what it is.

This “creative” program allows someone with a poor credit score to rather quickly improve their credit score by being added to someone else's credit instrument such as an asset account or a credit card. Many parents have done this to improve or establish the credit score of their children, or Grandma might add her Granddaughter to an asset account to better enable her to get a first home loan. Sounds harmless until you get into that element whereby credit-boosting services allow borrowers with no or impaired credit histories to improve their scores by becoming authorized users of someone else’s credit card history. The middleman simply hooks up someone with a great credit score with another in need of a credit score boost, charges a fee, pays the good credit party a fee, then reports the activity to the credit bureaus. Wow! According to some this gimmick could land you in jail! More to come no doubt, and it just makes you wonder—what the heck they come up with next ?

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**TJ2007** · 09-20-2007, 07:45 AM

People have been doing this with family and friends for years. Though have never seen a third party offering something like thaqt for a fee. I mean how could you trust them not to wreck your credit?

However the better lenders to take this into account and differenciate between a borrowers own accounts and those the are merely added onto. They generally wont use those accounts to qualify them for tradeline requirements. So just having the score isn't always the perfect cure.

**InRealEstateSolutions.com** · 09-21-2007, 02:27 PM

I've been hearing about this more recently. Being added onto someone else's account isn't illegal. However, I guess that it could be considered loan fraud. But what about the grandma and granddaughter situation? I wouldn't consider that fraud... but who knows. However, many credit institutions are no longer allowing this to happen on their accounts w/o *all* parties on the account having to qualify.