Appreciate Ideas - What to Do

[FANOFJESUS]

I think a small local credit union would be safer. No out of town or out of state branch to walk into. Depending on the credit union some only have 1 to 3 branches in your town. What do others think?

 

[Sunset]

This cloning of phone sim's is a terrible danger to all online accounts (IMHO).

OP - did BOA reimburse you for the stolen money ?? Have they saved the video of the person doing the transaction so police can view it ?

 

[tmm99]

This cloning of phone sim's is a terrible danger to all online accounts (IMHO).

My friend who was hacked into said she had a port freeze implemented. Don’t know how that works though. (This is with a Canadian phone provider.)

 

[braumeister]

My friend who was hacked into said she had a port freeze implemented. Don’t know how that works though. (This is with a Canadian phone provider.)

You have a PIN that you have to give your provider before they can port your number. Everyone should have that set up.

 

[RunningBum]

You might get more responses, and you would certainly be more helpful to anyone else who might hit this problem, if you you actually made the subject line descriptive. "ideas -- what to do" gives absolutely no clue. Thanks.

 

[jazz4cash]

You might get more responses, and you would certainly be more helpful to anyone else who might hit this problem, if you you actually made the subject line descriptive. "ideas -- what to do" gives absolutely no clue. Thanks.

+1
Seems to be a common issue on this forum, but I m guessing OP was stressed at the time of posting.

 

[kannon]

ok - I will be more descriptive next time

By all indications BoA said we would not lose any money but will take 60 days.

I learned with BoA you can in person set up a passcode needed for any in person transactions. DW is over there now trying to do that.

Still thinking of moving to Ally for bill paying and cash holding.

 

[SunBlueSky]

I think a small local credit union would be safer. No out of town or out of state branch to walk into. Depending on the credit union some only have 1 to 3 branches in your town. What do others think?

+1 on local credit union.

 

[Bamaman]

I guess that explains how some banks have ex-FBI agents working for them in the fraud departments.

I know of one bank with reserve sheriff deputies, and they even have arrest powers granted to them. Ever heard of a banker slapping the cuffs on a customer?

Sorry for what you've gone through.

 

[Walt34]

Unfortunately the police in MD said that the crime happened in SC so it's not them. Verizon won't give me the store where the number was ported over so I don't know which police dept to contact. Besides - don't think any police dept would waste time on this when they are short handed with much higher priority needs.

It depends on the police department's policies. Some are so understaffed they couldn't even begin to handle that. Others no problem.

As you were correctly told, the theft happened in SC so whatever agency handles it must have jurisdiction there, be it a city, county, state, or federal agency. Also, assuming that you are eventually "made whole" (i.e., reimbursed) your legal status changes from "victim" to "witness". BOA becomes the victim since the bank is the one who ultimately sustains the financial loss. Your role as witness is simply to say that as the account holder you did not authorize that transaction. Also (assuming you are made whole) despite the amount of time and angst this costs you, you have no say whatsoever as to whether this event is prosecuted or even investigated past the point of establishing that you didn't do it.

Whether BOA bothers to prosecute, assuming the bad guy can be identified and there is enough evidence to do so, is a business decision, not a moral or legal one. The bank's loss is $5,200, chicken feed in the scheme of things a bank deals with. They have to assign an employee to deal with reporting it to the police, following up with providing what evidence they have, dealing with the State's Attorney's Office (or whatever it's called there) and making people available for a trial should that come to pass, and that includes getting you down to SC, and housing and feeding you while you're there. Since most of these bad guys have a net worth in the negative numbers their odds of recovering any money are about zilch.

So the bank makes the only rational decision a businesses can make, and chalks it up to tuition. Then they decide if this happens often enough to make it worthwhile to overhaul any procedures to keep it from happening again, or is it easier/cheaper to just accept the occasional loss and let it go as a business expense. And bear in mind, their electric bill is probably larger if it doesn't happen that often.

So, as long as you get your money back, be happy.

 

[Fermion]

The scary thing would be if they accessed a brokerage account. Imagine with the text verification and all how much trouble it would be if someone hacked into your seven figure Fidelity account and just for the hell of it bought some really poor investment, like a million shares of Seadrill. Even better, what if they bought a million Seadrill weekly options at some ridiculous price? You could lose a million or more dollars in a day like that and it would be really hard to get it back I imagine.

A really enterprising thief could actually set up a trade on the other side, for a thinly traded stock or option, selling into the buy.

I have driven up the price of a stock by $0.10 all by myself on microcaps...imagine if you sold into that in another account, you could essentially steal tens of thousands of dollars that would take the SEC several days, weeks, months to figure out.

Scary, this digital age.

 

[jazz4cash]

It’s been ages since I went into a BoA branch and spoke to anyone. I remember when they had greeters that would do some transactions without having to wait for a teller. Now they have a remote branch nearby with no people. It just has ATMs and teleconference capability.

 

[Sunset]

It’s been ages since I went into a BoA branch and spoke to anyone. I remember when they had greeters that would do some transactions without having to wait for a teller. Now they have a remote branch nearby with no people. It just has ATMs and teleconference capability.

Our local branch has 1 inch thick bullet proof plastic. Makes me a bit nervous being out in the open lobby standing in line, as a robber is just going to say "Give me the money or I shoot your customers"

 

[Sunset]

I set all my alerts to any money in or out over $1.00

No need to give some criminal the chance to draw out $10 as a test without getting an alert about it.

 

[coveredbridge]

Bottom line: If an in person withdrawal was done from your account, a signature should have been required. It is the bank's legal responsibility to verify the identity of the customer and that the signature authorizing the withdrawal is genuine. Since the signature must have been a forgery, the bank is legally obligated to return the funds to your account upon receipt of a sworn statement from you that the signature was not genuine.

 

[indiajust]

SMS forwarding is easy to socially hack or otherwise attack.

Instead of 2FA with SMS, use app services such as Authy and VIP to authenticate. This way codes are locked to the device. Device and device password/acccess would have to be stolen and hacked to attack.

I recommend brokerages over banks. Banking too corrupt and fee intensive for my taste.

 

[Gearhead Jim]

An adult daughter had her purse stolen a few years ago, and a month or two later she had some large withdrawals from her checking account. Our daughter is a petite blond, the person who made the theft was a large black woman. The woman did not have the PIN. There were some other irregularities, but I don't recall what. The police officer who took the report said that they were getting an unusual number of similar situations regarding that bank and suspected there were employees involved. I won't name the bank because I think I remember which major one it was, but am not sure.


Much hassle, but daughter got her money back.