I do all my shopping in person @belluca , as do thousands of other people. Imagine, actually walking into a shop 
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Address Fraud: Someone is using your address for illegal or deceptive purposes, potentially to receive fraudulently acquired goods or intercept your mail. This can have consequences like financial loss and damage to your credit rating.
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Identity Theft: The fraudulent use of your address could be a component of a larger scheme to steal your identity and open credit accounts in your name. This can cause significant financial and emotional distress, impacting your credit and requiring considerable time and effort to resolve, says Chargebacks911.
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Credit Fraud: If they are using your address to apply for credit in your name or with your information, this constitutes credit fraud, a federal crime with serious repercussions.
The bank could have suffered harm if the HO did not intervene and stop the process. She stopped the fraud. And if it wasn’t, why didn’t the bank continue with giving them the credit card? The bank did not think the whole thing was legit. Pursuing it from that point is difficult. To pursue an attempted fraud is hard. So it got dropped. Do you understand the difference?
Perhaps, it is age, but I would not think that my stay at an HO entitled me to use their address for personal reasons, without permission. Even when I arrive, I ask to use the bathroom. I do not think that makes me any less self sufficient, just courteous.
I think there was emotional stress that this type of person was in their home. If you do not get that, then we are different types of sitters. This HO would not want you for a sitter, which is fine. There seem to be many others that do want you for a sitter. But to lambast those of us who consider courtesy to be part of being a sitter, which you consider to be a lack of self sufficiency is really quite interesting.
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It is an interesting situation. From what’s been shared, the police did not see it as fraud, and there’s no solid evidence—just assumptions—that the address was used for anything illegal or that the bank was at risk. The sitter, overseas at the time, needed to receive mail and used the address they knew. I wouldn’t have made that choice myself, but that alone doesn’t make it a crime.
Mentioning things like identity theft or credit fraud feels like jumping a few steps ahead—serious issues, but there’s nothing here to show they happened. We might as well have a post that says, “What if the sitter is an arsonist and sets my house on fire?” It’s all imagination, no reality.
The title of the original post, “Fraud by sitter,” unfortunately set a dramatic tone from the start. If it had been, “My sitter got mail at my house,” the reactions might have been very different.
And though it is true the HO felt emotional stress, it was entirely self-inflicted. A quick “return to sender” on the original envelope could have saved a lot of worry. Sometimes the story we tell ourselves about what might happen causes more distress than the thing itself.
I get what you’re saying about courtesy— of course that is essential. I just see “accepting deliveries” as a different issue. Courtesy is about respect, communication, and care for the homeowner’s space and pets. I’m on sits for the next three months, and need to receive my new car registration card and license plate sticker so the cops won’t pull me over for an expired plate. My best friend is going to retrieve them from my PO Box and overnight them to the address of my current sit. I cannot fathom why I should bother the HO with this detail when they’re in another country having a great vacation.
In cities I use those delivery lockers, which I love. It makes me feel like a super-spy retrieving vital intelligence from a secret location 
. In reality I’m usually picking up a resupply of deodorant and dental floss! 
Sometimes the difference between ‘fraud’ and ‘misunderstanding’ is just the story we choose to tell.
Take, for example, the story of “Richard”, a German veterinary student. Richard travels to Alabama through Trusted Housesitters to care for a dog, a cat, and a parrot. When his wallet is stolen during a pickup soccer game, he’s warned by the other players not to call the police. This is an ICE-cooperative jurisdiction, and even managers of the local Mercedes Benz and Honda plants were detained despite being there legally. Does Richard have a US driver’s license? Does he have a work permit?
He does not, and now he’s terrified. As an EU citizen, he’s accustomed to freedom of movement. It never occurred to him that petsitting in Alabama could land him behind bars.
Needing a credit card to rent a car for his next sit at a farm, he applies at a U.S. bank connected to his home bank in Germany, using the sit address for mailing so that he can receive the physical card. The card never arrives, the farmer cancels, and before he can apply for another sit, he’s expelled from the platform after a wave of unfounded complaints.
A skilled, compassionate future veterinarian is now barred from sitting or studying in the U.S.—not because of proven wrongdoing, but because of fear and assumptions.
This story is fictional, except for the part about the detained Mercedes and Honda executives. That part is true.
But if we can imagine fraud, can we also find it in our hearts to imagine innocence?
I do very little shopping in a brick and mortar store anymore, usually just basic groceries. More interesting groceries, household items, vehicle, clothes, footwear, travel items, hobby gear and more are acquired online. Most of the online items are not even available in local stores in my urban location and, when they are, the selection is a pittance of what’s available online.
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I have had a very similar experience. I offered two months hospitality to a registered sitter in advance of an arranged sit. The person had a problem with drink and there were quite a few a=accidents - one in which she broke her arm. She used my address and ran up a bill with a local hospital. The demands for payment arrived at my address. The sitter was disputing the bills and expected me to stop them arriving. I was furious. Not my mistake, why should I have to sort it all out. I had the throw her out before the sit actually started. I dare not leave her alone in my home. A year later, I am still getting letters addressed to her at my home. TH did their best but she was not actually doing a sit when I threw her out. She has subsequently done sits and received glowing reviews!! Sadly, this was a very bad experience but I can’t change my nature which is to try and help people.
In the U.S., an address is basically GPS coordinates, not a legal identity. If mail shows up for someone who doesn’t live here, I just write “Return to Sender” or “Not at This Address,” pop it back in the mailbox, and channel my inner Elvis. 
No stamp, no liability, no drama—and opening it to discover whether it is a demand for payment or anything else would actually be illegal. To your point, “Not my mistake, why should I have to sort it all out” - well, in the US, you don’t.
So now I’m curious: in your country, could a homeowner really be on the hook for someone else’s bills just because they landed in the mailbox?
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Its the same in the UK, Im a landlord and regularly get mail for ex-tenants- it all goes back into the mail box with ‘not known at this address’ written on the envelope - I don’t care how much anyone who has previously stayed at my address owes, it’s not my debt and never will be.
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“Even if the sitter had gotten a credit card at your address, how could that have harmed you? My identity has been stolen at least six times. Loans have been taken out using my social security number. There was even a court judgment against “me” for a debt a fraudster in another state took out using my name and social security number.”
For one, if this person gets a credit card and doesn’t pay it you will start getting mail from bill collectors. They possible can get your phone number.
I can’t believe that after being a victim of identity theft you would give someone else’s address to receive your mail!
I would think part of being a nomad means figuring out how you receive mail . I use Amazon lockers for packages when away from home. Being picked up by ride share or getting food delivery does identify you as a resident of that address. But giving an address it to a credit card company when the form asks for YOUR address is saying that you live there.
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I am not afraid of mail from bill collectors for bills I do not owe. I just mark them “return to sender” and send them back. Nor am I afraid of receiving phone calls from bill collectors. I typically have my phone set to only accept calls from numbers in my contacts, and if I accidentally answer a call from someone else, I just hang up.
I disagree that the only possible explanation for giving an address to a credit card company is representing that one lives there, particularly if one is traveling and in urgent need of a replacement card. It could be innocently representing that one needs to receive the physical card at those GPS coordinates before moving on to the next destination. They’re not going to send a replacement card to an Amazon locker.
This thread has become extremely lengthy and it seems some readers are losing track of the facts.
Fact: The person who filled out the credit card application was not me, or anyone else on this thread, but an anonymous sitter who has not been given the opportunity to explain his actions.
Fact: The police declined to investigate the matter, presumably because they did not deem it to be fraud.
Fact: The only demonstrable harm that has come to anyone from any of this is self-inflicted emotional stress from imaginary situations.
If we’re going to imagine, let’s at least imagine things that make us happier. For my part I’m off to imagine a bunch of fluffy cats seeing a box of paper mail and cavorting about with their new exciting playthings. I might even use AI to create an image of precisely that scenario, to enhance my happiness and joy. If it comes up with a great result, I’ll share it. I’d love for others to share their happy imaginings as well.
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A credit card company is asking for the address where you LIVE, not the GPS location of where you are standing at the moment.
If you need to receive the card elsewhere you need to contact them to make arrangements not give them someone else’s address
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The bank refused this person’s application for a credit card, so they obviously weren’t happy with the situation.
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I would definitely raise this with THS, and…possibly change my front door lock! This is really bad, and whatever the reasons it’s worrying. For the UK at least, it’s worthwhile anyway getting onto ClearScore or similar (see UK Action Fraud website, I think that has details), which shows any soft or hard searches against your name and might show up if someone had applied for a CC against your address, although you’d need to look at that. I get monthly updates on my credit score and ways to improve it.
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According to what the homeowner wrote, the bank approved the application - that is how this whole drama started.
Only after they discovered that they could not send a card to the mailing address did they close the account. If that bank works like mine, the inability to deliver a physical card would make it impossible for the card to ever be used, so closing it is a logical outcome. When the physical card is delivered, it includes a ‘secret code’ used to call or go online with the bank to verify receipt. Only then can it be used to charge anything.
Please provide the evidence for this, @ExploreDreamDiscover
The homeowner made clear that this was a sitter from overseas, here on a temporary basis. That was mistake number one, by the way - if this was in the US, and it seems that it was, that was illegal behavior on both sides. If the homeowner had used a legal, US-resident sitter, we would not be having this discussion.
Since by all accounts the sitter did not have a home or a mailing address in the United States, how can we know - not guess, but know, that the bank did not instruct him to put the best address for him to receive the card, which logically could be at the place where he was staying when he applied? It would be completely illogical for him to put his overseas address if he was not going to be back there for many months, especially if he needed the card quickly.
It is possible that people on this thread are confusing “Social security number” with “address”. Absolutely, 100%, without a doubt using a homeowner’s social security number to apply for credit is fraud. But that is NOT what happened here.
Nevertheless, this thread, like many, has birthed a new important topic - best practices for getting mail when you’re on a sit. I’ll start that topic now.
The bank discovered that they couldn’t send a card to the mailing address, AND the applicant didn’t actually live there .
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?? It is hard to respond without crossing THS boundaries. The police chose not to pursue. I had movers steal 18K USD of bonds. But there was nothing they could do. They were savings bonds in my daughter’s name. So they were TP to anyone else. The detective knew they did it, they refused to do a polygraph, but it didn’t matter. I just needed a police report so that US treasury would reinstate the bonds in my kid’s name. Not that the police didn’t want to. It was a useless way to file. But I just filed to get the US treasury requirement done. So nothing was done. You really cannot see the whole picture. Sometimes crimes are committed, no actual harm was done. But a bunch of inconvience on the part of the HO etc. To say nothing illegal was done is a far cry because the police didn’t file a report. To make them do something when nothing could be done, the illegal credit card was not issued etc, is ridiculous. The HO was put in a state of stress and has to monitor her credit to see what else they did. Are you able to actually comprehend what happened here or are you the one that committed the attempted fraud?
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I see these as very different situations.
In your case, the police produced a report. In the OP’s situation, they didn’t — and that’s usually the first step before anything else happens. While I wouldn’t expect an investigation without good reason, I would expect them to document it if there were signs of actual fraud.
Of course, none of us — me included — can know the whole story from the few details shared here. From what we do know, it seems the HO’s stress came from imagining a worst-case scenario that didn’t come to pass. I feel for her — that kind of worry is exhausting — but the same imagination can be used to picture a better outcome or focus on the present reality: she’s safe and nothing happened. Keeping an eye on credit is smart, but honestly, that’s something most of us do all the time now.
THS works best for people who assume good intentions. When we expect the worst, we often end up finding it, even if it’s not really there.