On
Friday, March 30th as I was checking our accounts again, I noticed
that there was a charge on one of our NEW accounts listed
as a charge for paper return for insufficient funds totaling $4700. After
confirming with Jeff that he had had no activity on the account, I
immediately called the bank to find out what was going on. I spoke to a
couple different customer service representatives who informed me that the
charges were from checks written to and cashed by an “Angela Stevens.” They
told me there were three separate checks, two for $1600 and one for $1500, but
they couldn’t access any images or give me any more information. I told the
representatives that I had not deposited any checks to this account. I told
them about my purse being stolen and asked if this could in any way be related
to someone using my account fraudulently. The representative said most likely
not, but said that they would go ahead and file a claim. Jeff called again that same afternoon to try and
find out more information. The customer service representative he spoke to
assured him that it was probably just a bank error and that they would
hopefully get it resolved soon.
We let
the case go over the weekend, since most of the case activity is done on
weekdays, but continued to check our account every day. On Tuesday, April 3nd,
I decided to call the bank in Georgia to find out
if they would indeed be mailing me back my driver’s license and debit card. I
spoke to the teller who had originally called about the
fraudulent activity, and taken my license from the woman at the drive though, and she told me that on the back of the check that the woman was trying to cash was
written one of our NEW bank account numbers. Somehow this person who
stole my purse had been given access to at least one of our new accounts and
was cashing bad checks. (They had someone else's checks and wrote checks to 'Angela Stevens' who went through the drive through & cashed them rather than just deposit them)
After
speaking to the teller, I immediately opened up our online bank account again, and saw
right away that there was another pending charge for $1600 listed as charge for
paper return because of a closed account. I immediately called the bank again and asked them how this was going through when we had just informed them
on Friday that it there was fraudulent activity going on. When I gave her our case number, she informed
me that someone had filed the case incorrectly- as a ‘research’ case rather
than a ‘fraud’ case and immediately changed the status to fraud and put a
freeze on our new account.
Meanwhile, this person who had stolen my purse just walked away with $6300 in cash! Jeff and I couldn't believe it. We had done everything correctly. We had gone though a huge process to create new accounts to prevent anything from happening, but because some employees of the bank weren't paying close attention, someone was able to collect an easy $6300.
Once again, we completely closed out our accounts and went through the process of getting new, separate accounts, adding even more security measures. I spent a good chunk of another day updating all our 20+ mortgage/loan/bill/online accounts again. In addition, I spent about 8 hours completing more than10 pages of paperwork that had to be filled out, notarized, and sent off to a fraud team who would review it, and decide whether or not it was a legitimate case.
After a couple weeks, I'm happy to report that they did indeed rule it as a fraud case and refunded our money and the bank had to suffer the consequences for giving out the money in error. It has just been a crazy incident and I'm really hoping that this is the end of it!
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