Credit washing is the practice of removing “legitimate, accurate and non-obsolete credit data from credit profiles,” according to the nationwide U.S. credit bureau TransUnion.

Just this year, the company says, an estimated $10 billion in debt has been erased from credit reports, the result of up to 5% of consumers in the U.S. having “charged-off accounts suppressed for atypical reasons.”

The numbers in TransUnion’s new fraud analysis show a nearly 700% increase in consumer-initiated charge-off suppressions over the past two years, and a 200% increase in suppressions initiated by lenders over the past four years.

Steve Yin, global head of fraud at TransUnion, said in a press release that credit washing has led lenders to experience “great financial loss from consumers whose credit and fraud risk is not accurately represented due to missing credit history.”

So-called “atypical suppressions” can emerge from consumer, lender, credit repair and debt settlement actions that remove legitimate credit events from people’s profiles.

Removing legitimate credit events can artificially increase borrower credit scores, affecting everything from mortgage lender risk management to the interest rates offered on mortgage loans.

According to TransUnion’s research, atypical charge-off suppressions can inflate consumers’ credit profiles by at least one risk tier on average — say, from near prime to prime. In extreme cases, a borrower can jump from subprime to super prime overnight.

“It’s important to remember that credit washing is not the same as the removal or correction of inaccurate or illegitimate credit data, an important consumer protection to address genuine issues with a credit report,” Yin added.