They informed us that someone has been using our debit/ATM card to make large withdrawals since the 12th of this month--the lowest one was $80, but most were more than $200 and the largest one was $800. The culprit is making said withdrawals from ATMs in the not-so-great state of Utah.
The kicker: I have the card in my wallet. Somehow this person got hold of my card number and PIN, and must have made a dummy card using a blank. This is pretty damned sophisticated thieving; I will grant them that (my theory is that to get both the card # and the PIN, they must have hacked into some computer system somewhere--most likely a POS system, such as the ones we use at the grocery store or gas station, if not the bank's system itself). I have never used the card online, just for this reason. Fat lot of good it's done me, eh?
I had to go to the bank this morning to sign an affadavit that these were unauthorized withdrawals (there were about 10 of them in all). Much to my dismay, though we spoke to the folks on Saturday and they told us they were freezing the card number, there were two additional withdrawals just this morning, which got most of Tim's paycheck (direct-deposited this past Friday).
So they drained our account, caused us to bounce a check (luckily the bank did pay it, and we will make sure they refund us the overdraft fee when this is all straightened out), and now we have NO MONEY (well, there is about $250 left of Tim's paycheck, which Tim can access with his ATM card since mine is allegedly frozen out of the system) until the investigation is done; I assume our balance will be restored to what it was one minute before these bogus charges began, less the legit ones we had this week. Meantime, ASSPAIN. All our bills are due. Luckily, Tim had a wad of cash from getting paid for his gig out of state last weekend. We can use that to pay the most pressing ones immediately.
Oh, and one other way the bank sucks--their security system was not triggered even when I supposedly used the card to withdraw $800 in Utah the very same day I bought $3.60 worth of gas here in MA. How very effective they are! We had to call THEM to find out there was a problem. Jayzis, I hate banks.
Ultimately, though, I think I blame Utah.
- Current Mood:
aggravated
Comments
I've never had anything like that happen to me, ever. I'm sorry!!!
Similar thing happened to one of my coworkers. The thief charged up about $5k, and the band still made her eat about $500 of the charges. Grr. They hired a private investigator to try to track down the low life and make them pay,but it didnt pan out. Supposedly, the bank had some leads but refused to divulge based on some confidentiality bullshit.
I hope the fucker responsible is caught and bludgeoned within inches of his/her worthless life.
I suppose I may be assuming too much good will on the part of the bank--that we will not be harmed by this, financially, in the end. . .I am an optimist; what can I say? But it just plain wouldn't be fair for us to have to eat ANY charges related to someone in Utah emptying our account.
I know there's a programme available that randomly generates possible CC numbers, which fraudsters use by just repeatedly trying the generated numbers at online stores. Maybe something like that happened to you? Fuckers.
Good luck, m'dear!
Do keep a sharp eye on their charges and also any direct debits you might have set up - make sure the bank covers them and doesn't charge you one thin dime for any of 'em. And no, they don't care. They have insurance up the wazoo and pay people shit wages, so the level of caring usually registers right above zero.
ARGH for ya!