By Kimberly Palmer, NerdWallet

A Redditor recently asked how to recover after their parents did a number on their credit score.

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The original poster shared that while on break from college, they discovered a letter from a collection agency addressed to them. It referenced an unfamiliar unpaid account.

They soon learned their parents had taken out multiple credit cards in their name without permission to help cover household expenses. Their parents had allegedly charged thousands of dollars in debt, left it unpaid, and now the collections agencies were calling.

The Redditor wanted to know: What’s the best way to rebuild and protect credit in the wake of this kind of experience?

Unfortunately, familial fraud — when one family member steals the identity of a child or other family member — is relatively common, even though actual numbers are hard to come by, says Axton Betz-Hamilton, who wrote a memoir about her own experience with familial fraud called “The Less People Know About Us.”

“It’s very under-reported due in part to the victim not wanting to get their family member in trouble,” says Betz-Hamilton, who is also an associate professor at South Dakota State University.

Victims often feel a heightened sense of shame and embarrassment, she adds.

The good news is you can recover from familial fraud, although it can take years. Here are five steps experts recommend.

1. Freeze your credit

Freezing your credit prevents anyone, including your parents, from taking out new accounts in your name. When your credit is frozen, lenders can’t access your credit report. Freezing your credit is a free process that can be done through the credit bureaus.

Betz-Hamilton suggests freezing your credit as soon as you realize your identity has been compromised. If you need to apply for a new credit account yourself, you can temporarily unfreeze it.

2. File a police report

In addition to freezing credit, filing a police report gives you evidence to share with lenders and the credit bureaus that your identity was stolen, which makes it easier to contest the fraudulent charges.

This part can be really hard, but it’s an important step in order to prove that you have been a victim, says John Ulzheimer, a credit expert.

“You have to rat out your parents,” he says. “It requires some courage on behalf of the victim.”

In addition to filing a police report, Ulzheimer recommends filing an identity theft report with the FTC to further document what happened.

3. Pull your credit report and dispute fraudulent accounts

The next step is to pull your credit report (you can do so for free using annualcreditreport.com) and dispute all of the fraudulent accounts listed.

From there, you contest the fraudulent accounts with both the credit bureaus and the lenders.

Doing so will initiate an investigation, Ulzheimer explains. Adding relevant evidence such as providing the police report will increase the chances that the fraudulent accounts will be removed from your account — but a positive outcome isn’t a given.

In some cases, the investigation might determine that you are responsible. That’s because there could be “credible connections” between your identity and the accounts, especially if they were used for household expenses at your address.

“All creditors have different policies and procedures in terms of how they investigate fraud claims,” he explains, and the investigation can result in either the debt being removed from your credit report or remaining in place.

4. Take out a secured credit card

Even with the fraud dispute ongoing, you can take steps to start to rebuild your credit.

Opening up a secured credit card, making on-time payments to existing accounts and keeping your credit utilization under 30% can all help.

However, collection accounts typically stay on your credit report for up to seven years.

“It can be a long and frustrating process,” Betz-Hamilton says.

5. Invest in your mental health

Betz-Hamilton recommends taking care of your well-being during the tough time. “The emotional effects of familial identity theft are often more profound than the financial effects,” she says.

A mental health counselor, social worker or therapist can aid the recovery process.

“Finding that supportive network of trusted others — friends and family that are not part of the identity theft, or professionals you can trust — that is critical,” she adds.

Reddit is an online forum where users share their thoughts in “threads” on various topics. The popular site includes plenty of discussion on financial subjects like identity theft, so we sifted through Reddit forums to get a pulse check. People post anonymously, so we cannot confirm their individual experiences or circumstances.

Kimberly Palmer writes for NerdWallet. Email: kpalmer@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @kimberlypalmer.

The article Asked on Reddit: My Parents Ruined My Credit. How Can I Fix It? originally appeared on NerdWallet.

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — An Arizona Department of Public Safety helicopter responding to assist officers with an active shooter situation crashed, killing both the pilot and a trooper who was a paramedic on board, authorities said.

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A Ranger helicopter crew responded to assist the Flagstaff Police Department and other law enforcement agencies on Wednesday night, Sgt. Kameron Lee of the department said in a statement.

“Tragically, during the incident, the helicopter crashed, killing both the pilot and the trooper/paramedic on board,” Lee said.

The names of the trooper and pilot have not been released.

The Bell 407 helicopter crashed near Flagstaff about 10:15 p.m. and there was a fire afterward, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. A search of the registration number showed the helicopter was manufactured in 2004.

KTVK-TV showed a map indicating that the crash happened northeast of the shooting scene.

The FAA said it will assist the National Transportation Safety Board in the crash investigation. An email seeking information was sent to the NTSB early Thursday.

The state Department of Public Safety’s Air Rescue Unit is trained for various high-risk situations, including mountain and water rescues.

The suspect in the shooting suffered non-fatal gunshot wounds and was taken into custody, Lee said. No one else was injured.

By MATT OTT, Associated Press Business Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits jumped last week but remains in the same historically low range of the past few years.

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Applications for jobless aid for the week ending Jan. 31 rose by 22,000 to 231,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s significantly more than the 211,000 new applications that analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet had forecast.

Applications for unemployment benefits are seen as representative of U.S. layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market.

A number of high-profile companies have announced job cuts in the past year, including UPS, Amazon and Dow just last week.

On Wednesday, the Washington Post laid off one-third of its staff, eliminating its sports section, several foreign bureaus and its books coverage in a widespread purge at the storied newspaper owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. A private company, the Post did not disclose how many people it has on staff, making it impossible to estimate how many people were laid off.

Mounting layoff announcements in the past year, combined with the government’s own sluggish labor market reports, has left Americans increasingly pessimistic about the economy.

Last month, the government reported that hiring remained subdued in December, capping a year of weak employment gains that have frustrated job seekers even though layoffs and unemployment remained historically low.

Employers added just 50,000 jobs last month, nearly unchanged from a downwardly revised figure of 56,000 in November, according to the Labor Department. The unemployment rate slipped to 4.4%, its first decline since June.

January’s jobs report, which was scheduled for release Friday, has been delayed due to the partial government shutdown earlier this week.

The U.S. economy gained just 584,000 jobs in 2025, an average of around 50,000 per month. That’s sharply lower than that more than 2 million added in 2024, which amounts to an average of nearly 170,000 per month.

The 2025 numbers represent the smallest annual job gains since the COVID-19 pandemic decimated the job market in 2020. Outside of recessions, it’s the slimmest annual increase since 2003.

The Labor Department also recently reported that businesses posted far fewer jobs in November than the previous month, a sign that employers aren’t yet ramping up hiring even as growth has picked up.

Businesses and government agencies posted 7.1 million open jobs at the end of November, down from 7.4 million in October.

The data has revealed a labor market in which hiring has clearly slowed, hobbled by uncertainty raised by President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the lingering effects of the high interest rates the Fed engineered in 2022 and 2023 to tamp down a spike of pandemic-induced inflation.

The Federal Reserve, in an attempt to shore up a softening labor market, trimmed its benchmark lending rate by a quarter-point three straight times at the end of last year. However, last week the U.S. central bank left its benchmark lending rate unchanged in the midst of a broadly improving economic outlook and what officials called a stabilizing labor market.

Thursday’s report from the Labor Department also showed that the four-week moving average of jobless claims, which balances out some of the week-to-week gyrations, rose by 6,000 to 212,250.

The total number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the previous week ending Jan. 24 grew by 25,000 to 1.84 million, the government said.

By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is taking direct aim at the financial lifelines of Mexico’s most violent drug cartels, targeting money brokers who prosecutors say have adapted to intensified enforcement by increasingly routing drug profits through cryptocurrency from American cities to cartel leaders in Mexico.

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The cases of four defendants recently sent from Mexico to the U.S. for prosecution provide a glimpse into shadowy money laundering networks that allow the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and other violent groups to continue pumping dangerous drugs into American communities. The prosecutions underscore the Justice Department’s efforts to turn up the pressure on cartels and stay ahead of their sophisticated and ever-evolving tactics to launder money across the border without detection.

By targeting alleged money brokers — rather than street-level traffickers — prosecutors say they are aiming at a choke point they believe is essential to the cartels sustaining their operations as law enforcement pressure mounts on more visible drug routes.

“If you cut off the money, you hurt the cartels, and that’s what we’re trying to do,” A. Tysen Duva, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second administration, the Mexican government has turned over more than 90 high-level defendants with ties to cartels in three transfers now at the center of a legal debate in Mexico. The defendants were wanted by U.S. prosecutors for crimes including drug trafficking, human smuggling and money laundering.

Senior Justice Department officials say bringing cartel figures to the United States is designed to do more than be a deterrent message. It could also lead to indictments against other high-level leaders if defendants cooperate, allowing prosecutors to reach higher into cartel leadership. Under Trump’s Republican administration, the Justice Department has restructured the Criminal Division to integrate narcotics prosecutors with anti-money laundering experts to better target cartels and to reflect a broader shift toward targeting the financial systems that sustain their operations.

The latest transfers to the U.S. include alleged Mexico-based money brokers, who authorities say oversee the movement of drug proceeds and pocket a percentage of the money that returns to the cartels as a commission, according to court papers. The brokers arrange for cash to be picked up in cities across the U.S. and conceal the money to get it across the border, often through digital assets as law enforcement has cut off other methods.

Prosecutors “want to hear on the distribution side how it works, who is involved, and seek additional indictments, and on the money laundering side, exactly the methods that they are using to get the money out of the United States through the U.S. banks,” Duva said. “There’s bulk cash smuggling that has been going on since the beginning of time, and then also sort of the newer trend of taking the cash, buying cryptocurrency, and then trading that cryptocurrency.”

Eduardo Rigoberto Velasco Calderon, Eliomar Segura Torres, Manuel Ignacio Correa and Cesar Linares-Orozco face money laundering conspiracy charges in indictments filed in Kentucky’s federal court. An attorney for Linares-Orozco declined to comment in an email to the AP, and no attorneys were listed in court papers for the other defendants.

The January transfer of 37 defendants from Mexico to the U.S. marked the third of its kind under Trump’s second term. Observers have described the transfers as an offering by Mexican authorities to offset mounting threats by Trump to take military action against cartels.

A group of lawyers and family members of cartel figures have accused Mexico of breaking the law by sending them without an extradition order. Mexico’s government has maintained the transfers were legal, carried out in the name of national security.