Common Sense Costs Extra: Bank Sues Identity Theft Victim
from the sue-first,-ask-questions-later dept
There's no denying that identity theft is a big problem these days, and it can often be tricky for banks and other financial institutions to deal with the victims of such crimes while making sure that a real scam took place, but there are times where things get ridiculous. Digg points us to the news that a woman who was the victim of an identity theft that emptied her bank accounts in a matter of days has now been sued by Bank of America for $23,312.04 worth of overdraft. Of course, the activity draining her accounts probably should have set off alarms at the bank -- and even afterwards, before sending out the lawsuit, you'd think that the bank would take a look at the account to determine what likely happened. Of course, now that the woman's story is in the NY Post it's likely (one hopes) that the folks at BofA will reconsider -- but perhaps they should have checked things out before sending out the lawsuit.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Bank of America Taking Hits Lately...
http://redtape.msnbc.com/2007/05/id_thief_bounce.html
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It's only an american problem
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Re: It's only an american problem
http://software.silicon.com/security/0,39024655,39128357,00.htm
http://www.zdnet.com.au /news/security/soa/Study-Identity-theft-keeps-climbing-/0,130061744,339274069,00.htm
I'm sure if I kept looking I could find even more links. True, almost every one counts US losses as about 1/3 of the total world-wide, which is a very large chunk, but realistically this is not 'only an American problem.'
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Re: Re: It's only an american problem
the articles you link do not really prove your assertion...
UK: "Identity theft affecting one in four UK adults" sounds good as a title, but turns out, that bold title is actually based on: "A quarter of adults have been a victim identity theft or know someone who has been affected by it"
which makes it a whole lot less impressive...
AU: 15 million americans on average $3,257 a piece...compared with that, AU$5.2M is peanuts in comparison. Not to mention that it's unclear that 5.2M is entirely due to identity theft, as it's been been lost to scams and rip-offs which appear to include lottery scams, fake investment schemes both it would seem would involve you handing over your money, not the bad guys stealing your identity and then extracting money somehow/somewhere.
I'm not saying it's not a mainly US problem, actually, I don't know for sure (although I do think it's at least possible it's mainly a US problem), all I'm saying is the two links you provide do little to convince me of your assertion it isn't...
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Re: It's only an american problem
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Re: It's only an american problem
I'm Canadian, and it's a huge problem here, as well as in the UK, Africa, India, Australia, South America, Europe, China, Japan, Taiwan, etc. etc. the only reason I can think of for someone to make a statement like yours is that maybe you are an identity theif yourself!?!
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Bank of Amerixico
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Thievers
Who commits thievery, then? :)
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Re: Thievers
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Banks are making themselves irrelevant
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Re: Banks are making themselves irrelevant
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Re: Re: Banks are making themselves irrelevant
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boa, that's why
I HATE BOA!!! i switched to sovereign and never had another problem.
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Re: boa, that's why
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Re: boa, that's why
That said, I don't agree with their policy for strange purchases; on more than one occasion I've had to make a larger-than-normal purchase, and they've frozen my account after that purchase because it's not normal activity for me. That wouldn't be so bad, but the thing is, they don't make any attempt to let me know that they've done that. I have to wait until I'm in line buying groceries or fast food or whatever and find out that I suddenly can't use my card.
So I guess I've got the opposite problem: BOA is protecting me, but they need to work on how they do it.
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I love Bank of America
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Bank of America -created- my Identity Theft
After some months of paying my bills online without incident, Bank of America began a series of increased "security" "improvements" making it harder and harder to log on, until one day I could not get farther into the account pages than my login/password/security image. After a lot of phone calls, and hours on hold I finally figured out that they had decided that my account needed to be bonded to and rolled into my husband's accounts and I didn't know (actually, I refused to provide since I had no legitimate reason to be in his account space) the password to his bank account MAC card. This would not have been all that inconvenient if we had actually shared finances, however in this case we have lived separately for 15 years.
So now I can't get at my account to pay it and my husband has free rein to do what he likes with it. It is a good thing we are still friends and my husband is a moral person or this little trick of theirs would have been a disaster.
I will not go into the saga of how we finally managed to get the accounts unhooked--suffice to say it was a long and annoying experience.
With this policy in place I expect they have caused more identity thefts than they have prevented.
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Chase
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The title rings true:" Common sense costs extra". If you provide the info to thieves, why should it be the bank's fault? If customers do stupid **** by replying to phishing emails or following bad links, why should the bank have to cover the costs of stupidity?
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Because they said they would. They advertise it, they need to either make it work or stop saying they'll do it.
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BofA... my least favorite bank
First they replaced an MBNA card that still had a year to go, without my permission and without telling me.
Then they changed the website requiring me to re-register everything.
Then they closed the account that electronic payments were being sent to so that a payment bounced, and then they hit me for $54 of fees on a $21 balance.
When I complained, they removed some of the fees, but I had had enough and closed the accounts.
They got a $15 "fee", and lost a customer for life. Good job, gang!
http://wizardprang.com/2006/11/15/bofa/
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we all hate banks
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Hate them
Perhaps they should just change their name to BoDA (bank of dumbasses)?
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just one bank
That one bank? BOA of course.
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The Only Villian of Identity Theft is the Banking
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Bank's negligence to help ID thieves
Hicksville, New York 11801
August 26, 2008
President
Bank of Amrica
471 N. Buckeye Road,
Phoenix, Arizona
RE: One of the fake accounts #...1297
Dear President:
In early August, 2007, we were called by the colcal branch of Bank of America. My wife went into the bank. she was questioned if she wrote a check for 8,000. she did not. Someone opened
the accounts in our name. We want to have a copy of the fake check. The officer said yes, but we did not get it from the bank yet, although many times we request it.
During the dispute, we got a copy of the forged check for $1,250 in my name as if I made out payable to my son. Of course, the signatures all wrong, missing a middle initial. But, any way, the bank honored the forged check and released money to the wise guy through another bank.
We reported back to the bank that we did not print the check and it was a forged one. But the bank did not say anyting about it yet.
We are still waiting for a copy of the $8,000 forged check.
Last month, the president of the Bank of America, 1825 E. Buckeye Rd., Phoenix, Arizona 85034 strangely got a default judgment against my son from the Nassau County District court, New York, who never lived in Phoenix and never opened the account.
The fake story is like this. According to the bank, my son opened a credit account in 2002, and purchased items. He did not pay and then filed the lawsuit against him, at his fake address, at 471 N. Broadway, Jericho, New York 11753. He never lived at the address, which is false. Of course he never received any valid receipts or purchase records from it.
Then, Michael A. Cammon swore the Affidavit of facts,and
notarized on June 12, 2007. He stated that he knew all the facts of lawsuits onpurchases.
For this time, Michael A. Cammon represented as an agent of Bank of America, 275 S. Valencia Ave., Ca 7-70. Brea, Ca. 92823, This time, it jumped to California from Arizona.
It is hard to understand how the scenario on lawsuit jumped round. For now the lawyer is in New York.
Without proper information, my son faced so called traverse hearings at Nassau County District Court, New York. The court did not give any chance to my son to present his case and ruled the default judgment for over $14,00 for Bank of America, Phoenix, Arizona.
According to the court records, the summons served upon my son, July 25, 2007 at the present address, Nassau County, New York. We never received it. How this kind of judgment could happen to the innocent person in the McCain-Obama era, U.S.A.?
It seems that the banks target the elderly and minority victims who are socially handicapped and do not have many resources to fight against like these abuses.
All of Ourfrauds reported to FBI, Fed. Trade commission, police, etc. No help comes from them at all.
Recently, at a news conference, Bank of America CEO was questioned by an ID theft female victim. His answer was that ID theft division would take care of it. But. his answer was very cool to the ID terror victim without any emotional expression or a CEO regret. Banks are so powerful that they could collect free money from the poor guys.
Who can reshape this ominous power structure in this society?
Why did your Fraud Department Mirjana Petropic did not file the lawsuit? Did the department contact us for the stolen money in the lawsuit case?
I would appreciate it very much when your kindly advice me if you really filed this lawsuit?
Sincerely,
Chae S. Sone
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