You are going to want to do the following:

1) Visit the websites for experian, equifax, and transunion and get a 90 day fraud alert put up. This is just a temporary measure until you get a longer alert/freeze in place. 2) View your reports with experian, equifax, and transunion for any funny business. All check your ChexSystems report. 3) File a police report with your local police. Sounds stupid, and the police won't do anything. That said, you pretty much need to in order to lock down your credit for free. 4) Choose if you want a longer term freeze or alert. A freeze will deny access to everyone (even you) unless you call and unlock it with a special pin they give you - and you need to give them like 3 days notice or something like that. An alert is just a flag to anyone checking your report that you have been a victim in the past and that they should try to make sure it is you. We have a freeze and have gone through a home sale and purchase and a few credit card applications with it and I don't find it too tedious - at least when I consider the peace of mind that comes with it. If you set it up, take good notes about what number to call to unlock and your various account #'s and passwords and put it somewhere safe. That will make it easier and quicker when you need to take it down. I even have written down what numbers to press on the phone menus. 5) If you have a spouse and kids, consider locking down theirs as well. Odds are whatever account got hacked/piece of paper got stolen also had their info.

Also do all the steps with the FTC and IRS listed as part of the main post. Write down everything...every call you made, the name of the person you spoke with, date, synopsis of what they said. When someone with the IRS is going to pick up after you've been on hold, there is first a brief pause in the IRS hold music and then the music plays again for like 10 seconds. Then you know to have your pen ready to write down their agent #.Keep a copy of every letter you send. It took me a good year and half to get everything settled, and you definitely start to forget! You want proof that you've done everything. The IRS almost took us to court saying my husband hadn't paid his taxes in three years. I still don't know how/why, b/c he has always filed joint with me - and they weren't tagging me as having not paid. It got settled, but it was a long fight.

Sorry this happened to you. You can get through it too. Feel free to keep pm'ing me.