Charming how the bank just skates through this whole thing with a little halo over its head. They should be liable for their own failure to authenticate the customer. Immediately restore the $5k, then they chase after the thief.
Seriously. And this is the author writing her own story. You'd think that after two years she'd have done a little reflection to realize that there are two instances of fraud here. The mule deceiving the bank into giving them the cash, and the bank deceiving the author into thinking the bank owes her $5k less. Align the incentives and all the bloviating about fraud "czars" and difficulties of prosecuting non-violent crimes just falls away.
I've got to wonder how much people's broken understanding of these situations is an extension of that same old mistaken belief that banks hold your money in their safe or something. Notice how she's continually going on about "my money". Whereas actually your bank balance is merely a debt the bank owes you, which cannot have been altered by the bank being defrauded. Any more than a cursory one or two business days to fix her account ledger is unacceptable. If after 60, 90, or however many days the bank cares to spend investigating it turns out that the account owner lied when disputing the original transaction, that would be its own fraud and can be prosecuted post-facto the same as anything else.
> Whereas actually your bank balance is merely a debt the bank owes you, which cannot have been altered by the bank being defrauded.
It's often amusing--and sometimes enlightening--to imagine how well the same nonsense-logic would work if it was being used to the benefit of a consumer instead of an institution:
"Hi Bank, I just sent enough money to fully pay off my mortgage! Now I fully own my house and our business is done... Wait, you didn't get it? That was some scammer who showed up randomly at my door with a fake business card? Well, that sucks.... for you, that is. I hope you manage to get your money back from them someday, ciao!"
> You'd think that after two years she'd have done a little reflection to realize that there are two instances of fraud here.
Three if you consider that New York let the criminal walk and go on the lam without posting any bail, due to a 2020 (presumably late 2020) 'law'
From the post:
> The bail reform law, which took effect in New York in 2020, eliminated the requirement for defendants to put up cash bail for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felony charges. It was meant to limit incarceration of defendants in New York who couldn’t afford to get out on bail while their cases play out, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union. The nonprofit’s website says reform has been essential to “upholding due process, advancing racial justice, and protecting public health” during the pandemic.
Making people pay for bail is an almost exclusively USA thing. Doesn't seem to be causing many problems in the rest of the world to assess bail on criteria other than "is able to afford it".
the term itself "identity theft" is part of the propaganda - instead of calling it "bank fraud" suddenly it's my problem because my identity has been stolen? no it hasn't, I'm still me. it's not my problem a bank got scammed by someone pretending to be me
Identity theft framing helps customers understand they have a responsibility in using these systems in a secure way. If you call it bank fraud, customers don’t see their part in the responsibility, and become careless, increasing the chance of bank fraud,
As a responsible consumer, how do I prevent Equifax and AT&T from distributing my information?
Actually, when someone signed up for a Bank of America checking account with my AT&T information, I notified AT&T once I was done with BofA... And AT&T ignored it, until 2 years later.
Whatever BS shreading and information hygeine I do amounts to nothing when a big company lets stuff out. Or when my employer's HR person keeps unencrypted payroll files on a USB drive in their car in SF.
And by calling it identity theft instead of bank fraud, the reverse effect is had on the common perception of who has responsibility when dealing with an incident. You can have your “””identity stolen””” at a bank without an ounce of carelessness on your end.
That doesn’t scan for me. We call it car theft and thousands of cars are stolen every day that are properly locked and parked, even in the owners driveway.
Banks are notorious for adopting new technology at a glacial pace, often only when forced to do so.
Witness the adoption of chip and pin in the U.S. oh wait, we still haven’t properly adopted it and a stolen card can just be tapped on the terminal of most retailers in 2024 with no additional authentication.
This is the real problem though. It's literally the money form of "password on paper" if you have such a card. Not that I have experience, but I'd assume the largest part of scams comes down to this, easily stolen and used credit card info. Like it's still 2014.
Probably because there would be a way to exploit such a policy. You’re a normal, honest person, so you think “Why wouldn’t the bank believe me? I would only claim I lost my money through fraud if it were true.”
But the bank also has to deal with dishonest people who might make fraudulent claims about being defrauded.
You're focusing on compensation to victim (and that becoming a new fraud mechanism). Instead, try focusing on what the banks could do to decrease the actual crime. Some examples:
US banking is notoriously sloppy about allowing withdrawals with just knowledge of routing number and bank account number, while every check written contains both numbers -- in Europe, the bank account number can only be used to transfer money to the account (and checks practically don't exist).
One day out of the blue, some hundreds of dollars were transferred out of my American bank account, seeming to claim purchases in a city several hours away. I didn't authorize such transactions. They were direct debits of my account, not credit card charges. A few days later, my money was returned. How was that possible? Why did the bank agree to transfer money out of my account?
All the way back in the 90s, my European bank gave me a one-time codebook, to be used in addition to username and password to authenticate online transfers. Whenever I was close to running out of codes, they gave me a new codebook. Managing to steal my password wouldn't have let an attacker easily empty my account.
My European bank in a small city, that I had been a customer of for decades, and whose employee that I was interacting with being a family friend, verified my passport before discussing a loan.
Yes, the situation in Europe is much better, even more so after the introduction of PSD2 which requires strong customer authentication and is specifically designed to avoid (or at least minimize..) identity fraud.
This doesn't justify putting all the responsibility on the innocent person whose money got stolen by fraud. The fraudster didn't get money from the innocent person. They got it from the bank. That should make it the bank's problem.
If the bank is concerned about fraudulent claims about being defrauded, that's just another case of them needing to improve their fraud detection process.
This is also why credit card companies refuse to work with porn - there are an immense number of people who charge back porn purchases almost immediately.
That's almost exactly what my credit union did. After I filled out the paperwork, they sent me out the door with some walking-around money (the thief had emptied my checking account), and the rest was returned within a couple days. I did nothing further; a fraud investigator called me up a couple of months later to ask a few questions, but by that point they already knew who the culprit was.
For this and many other reasons, I will never use a commercial bank again, if I can possibly avoid it.
Imagine you owe $15k to a hospital, and someone knocks on your door saying “hi, I’m from the hospital, can you pay us $5k?” You, in your naivety, head up to your mattress, get $5k in cash, then pay them. Turns out, they are not from the hospital. What happens if you say to the hospital, “unfortunately your identity was stolen, and now I only owe you the $10k left.” Given bank deposits are debts owed to you, this is exactly what the bank is doing to you.
