When I am about twenty-four, someone manages to get my banking info and drains my accounts. Granted, I didn’t have a ton of money, but between my checking and my savings, I think it was close to $2,500. The whole situation is a fiasco from start to finish and I’m honestly still pissed off at the bank because they didn’t catch the drain.
I find the drain when I log into my account to transfer some money so I can pay a couple of bills. I realize the money is gone and immediately call the bank.
Teller: “Thank you for calling [Bank]; this is [Teller].”
Me: “Hi. I just logged into my account, and someone took my money, and I do not recognize the location it was transferred to.”
Teller: “Let me take a look at that.”
She verifies my info and then takes a minute to check my account.
Teller: “Well, I see that there’s a [My Mom] also on your checking account. She probably took it.”
My mom is on my checking account because I opened it before I was sixteen so I needed an adult on the account. She isn’t on my savings account, and even if she was, she would not take my money without asking. And she also wouldn’t drain my checking and then sign into my savings and transfer all of that back into my checking and then once again drain my checking.
Me: “My mom wouldn’t take my money without telling me, and she’s never had access to my savings account. And wouldn’t you be able to tell that it went into her account?”
Teller: “Well, she’s also on the account, so she probably took it.”
Me: “Can you hang on just a moment?”
I put the teller on hold and call my mom on my cell.
Mom: “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
Me: “I’ll explain later, but you didn’t take all my money out of my bank accounts, did you?”
Mom: “No?”
Me: “Perfect, thanks. I’ll call you later.”
I end the call with her and get back on the line with the bank teller.
Me: “I just checked with my mom and she didn’t take the money.”
Suddenly, I’m getting more cooperation. The rep realizes that it didn’t go to another account from the bank. In fact, it seems to have gone to a completely different banking institution that I’m still not 100% sure is US-based. Now that they’ve figured that out, suddenly I’m talking with fraud and I have to explain myself about ten more times. I’m also told to go to my local branch the next day because I need to close my accounts and open new ones.
The next day, I’m down at the bank and we get things handled with closing the account and reopening a new one. Then, I’m told that they have to investigate and will get back to me as soon as possible. I am so stressed and not thinking clearly, so I don’t raise a fuss about the fact that I don’t even get supplemental funds.
A few days later, I’m still stressed because I’ve been dealing with cancelling anything that was set to autopay and changing information and double-checking that they didn’t manage to steal my identity, as well — thankfully, the only thing that came out of that situation was that they stole my money and managed to get my email address added to a bunch of random spam — and kind of getting the runaround from the bank.
I’m stressed as all get out, my boss isn’t being all that helpful in this, and generally, I’m just miserable. I get home one day and find a letter from the bank that says they’ve concluded their investigation and decided there has been no error. I lose it and call the number on the letter
Representative: “Thank you for calling [Bank]. How can I help tonight?”
I give her my name and my account information. I’m in tears throughout this.
Me: “I just got a letter from you guys that said there was no fraud detected. How could there have been no fraud detected? I’ve spoken to your fraud department, I’ve spoken to the branch manager at my local branch, and I spoke to another rep who admitted something wasn’t right. How in the h*** can you tell me there’s no fraud detected?”
Representative: “If they’ve determined there was no fraud, then that was the conclusion of their investigation.”
Me: “Even though I was speaking with fraud and they said there was fraud?”
Representative: “The only thing I can do is request they reopen the investigation. You’ll need to call your branch tomorrow.”
Me: “Reopen it, then. This is not okay.”
I get off the phone. I am NOT happy. Admittedly, I probably could have handled that call a little better; she didn’t have anything to do with the investigation. But in my defense, I’ve been getting a run around for a week and am not getting much help from anywhere. The next day, I call the manager at my branch.
Manager: “This is [Manager].”
Me: “Hey, [Manager], it’s [My Name]. Listen, I got a letter last night that said an investigation had been completed and no fraud had been detected.”
Manager: “That’s not good. Let me look into it and I’ll call you back.”
A couple hours passed and she did call me back. It turned out that the letter didn’t mean exactly what we’d thought. All it meant was that that specific department hadn’t determined fraud — it had been routed to a check investigation team or something like that — but my case was still being investigated.
They finally completed their investigation — the whole thing took them almost six weeks — and I did get my money back, but boy, was I ticked at that bank. I’m still mostly convinced that the reason it took so long was that it kept getting bounced to different departments because no one wanted to admit that they’d effed up because they didn’t catch the drain.
I mean, they flagged my card one time because I’d purchased some books for school and instead of reading it as a $65 charge, it apparently tried to read it as a $6,500 charge, which is too large to purchase online without authorization, apparently. But they didn’t catch someone draining my entire account?
