I had a similar thing happen a few years ago when I bought my house. There was a guy the same age as me with the same name who had defaulted on his mortgage, and I had to sign a statement saying I wasn't him. The funny thing was, I looked up the house he abandoned, and it was basically identical to the house I was buying, down to the ornamental plum tree in the front yard. Presumably got built in the same wave of development in the 70s.