Bank of America makes identity theft even worse than it already is
I have had several visits from potential clients whose identities were stolen in one way or another. In one case, the identity thief bought two houses in the victim’s name. The victim’s credit is now in ruins, and she is facing foreclosure on mortgages that were not hers to begin with. Undoing this kind of damage is never easier. And it is even harder when financial institutions will not cooperate.
Witness the case of Rachel Poor., whose debit card was apparently cloned by an identity thief. An identity thief stole her checking account, forging checks on her account. She acted fast, reporting the problem to Bank of America. But BoA refused to close her account because it had a negative balance, so the thief was able to continue withdrawing funds faster than Poor was able to try to deal with the fraud, racking up nearly $2,000 in purchases and $580 in overdraft charges.
It took BoA six weeks to refund Poor for the fraudulent charges. despite its BoA advertises its “Total Security Protection,” but among the caveats and quid pro quo: it doesn’t apply to checks.
- Zero Liability. If your card is lost or stolen, Bank of America reimburses you for any unauthorized card transactions up to the amount of the loss, when reported within 60 days from statement date.
- Guaranteed credit. Your account will be credited by the end of the next business day for unauthorized transactions if your card is lost or stolen.
I’m sure there are all kinds of caveats and quid pro quo surrounding those “guarantees,” but Maybe BoA should consider living up to its own hype.
[via Consumerist]
Where in the article did you read her debit card was cloned? Does the BOA Total Security Protection apply to checks? The article mentions the ID thief was writing checks against her account (see 2nd sentence in last section, “All the fraudulent charges involved forged checks”)
You read more closely than I. Fixed.
I find it interesting that BofA is the company you mention as they were incompetent and in my opinion, downright dishonest, when someone stole our identity and opened cards with BofA. When the collection calls started, it took us almost 2 months and several attempts to get BofA to even acknowledge receipt of the letter we sent contesting the two accounts as fraudulent. Once that was acknowledged, they responded back saying the account was indeed fraudulent (during this 30 days we continued to get daily collection calls which I’m told is against the law), except they only acknowledged one of the two cards in their response letter. We assumed all was well with the world until a year later their attorney called and threatened a judgment! At that point we hired legal counsel and they duked it out. I’m told they were in violation of federal statutes by contacting us at all after our letter was received. In the process they offered to charge off the debt which would have reflected negatively on our credit report. Thankfully we were credit savvy having both been in banking. It was a miserable awful experience and took us more than three years to finally rectify and get it cleared from our credit report. BofA did not want the info we had found out about the true villain to pursue criminal charges. At that time we could not press charges as we weren’t considered the “victims” of the crime! Yea, right! I will not willingly do business with BofA because of their incompetence in this matter. Because one of our credit cards was purchased by BofA, we have now made an exit plan to close that account.
I am going through a very similar situation with Bank of America right now. I have been dealing with this since December 2007, and I have yet to have my account corrected. I am about to loose everything because I have no options.
Bank of America has the most lax security I have come across. I had my checking account cleaned out in the beginning of 2005 and found out the week it had occurred. The fraud department supposedly put an alert on my account and per my instructions were not to allow any activity without my express permission. They would not close the account as they said until the investigation was complete, it had to be open for them to put the money back in the account to take care of negative balances. I could not get the money out fast enough once it was put back in my account; whoever had my information was monitoring my account and taking it out before I could. I was even at a branch trying to get my money one day when my acct balance dropped while I was at the desk. No one paid attention to the so-called fraud alerts on my accounts and I kept having thousands removed through pay by check and Visa 911 emergency wires to someone. When I had money taken from my acct to pay a phone bill in another state, I asked BOA to subpoena the address from the phone co (per the phone co’s procedure to release infor to police), BOA said it was too much work. Throughout a year and a half, I fought with BOA and they just didn’t care. As a matter of fact, when my balance was in the negative, they actually tapped into my son’s account from another state to make up the balance. As a result of this incompetence, my legit credit cards (one from them, included) had the interest rates jacked from 9% to 30%, causing my normal credit to be trashed. Every chance I get I warn people not to bank with BOA. You are not protected and they don’t care about giving your money away.