Bank of America is a fraudster’s fantasy
I am appalled by my friend Amy Alkon’s experience of not only having her account cleaned out by an identity thief, but of how easy Bank of America made it for the fraud to take place AND the fact that THEY are firing HER as a customer for not just taking “Screw you, we won’t help the police” as an answer. Reading the comments on that post is also frightening, as so many Bank of America customers report the same security breaches happening all over the country.
Please, if you do bank with BofA, at least freeze your credit if you aren’t willing to cancel your account with this rogue bunch. That will prevent any identity thief from taking out credit in your name. Luckily, being THE most vigilant person I have ever known when it comes to her identity (she gets nothing delivered at home except magazines in her dog’s name, never writes checks or uses a debit card, shreds everything, etc) Amy had already done this. It’s a good thing she did, too: Every day, she gets more and more “We’re sorry, but we cannot issue you a credit card…” letters from stores and financial institutions with whom the ID thief tried to open lines of credit in her name.
I vowed never to patronize Bank of America after reading multiple friends’ accounts of getting treated like crap by them, but this takes my disgust for these goons to a whole new level. I saw Amy in LA back in June and to say that she was distressed by this would be an understatement. She’s trying to deliver a manuscript of her book to McGraw-Hill and has been completely sidelined by conducting the investigation that BofA refused to undertake. Not to mention the visible emotional anguish she has suffered upon finding her bank account depleted with the cheerful assistance of the bank she’s given her business for twenty years. Yes, twenty years of patronage and THEY are firing HER as a customer because they can’t be bothered to fix all of their security issues. I feel sick for her, and sick at the thought of anyone else being subjected to the same nightmare.
Filed under: Life
Last year, $100,000 mysteriously showed up in my Bank of America account. The next month, $101,000 mysteriously vanished.
When I finally tracked down the problem, it turns out that they mixed up my account with that of my friend, the other Chris Yeh.
We did manage to straighten it out, but the capper is that I got a call from the private banking group, apologizing for misdirecting my home equity line, and assuring that it would never happen again.
“You’re still talking with the wrong Chris Yeh,” I told them flatly.
I’ve been telling people for years to get credit freezes and I’m still pushing for people to write their state legislature to get better freeze laws passed.
I’m glad you’re telling this story, horrible as it is. People need to understand that when their credit files are frozen, they’re far less likely to be involved in these kinds of nightmares.
Unfortunately, in this era of bank mergers, some folks who do not currently, or did not until a month ago, bank with BoA now find that it is their bank. Great! I’m sure LaSalle or whatever they took over last wasn’t perfect, but was probably a whole lot better.
Thanks so much for posting this, Jacks. Please, everybody, spread the word so BofA’s customers can decide for themselves whether they think their money, in light of my experiences and the tests I and others ran, is safe there.
Jeremy is quite right about credit bureau freezes. I froze my accounts in 2005, on the advice of my late friend and Jackie’s, Cathy Seipp. Best $30 I have EVER spent, and that is not an exaggeration.
LaSalle was the previous incarnation of the Bank of America in the midwest where they gave money out to one of my testers…without even LOOKING at his driver’s license…the only piece of ID he pulled out. No PIN. No signature verification (he signed differently, too, just in case).
P.S. I am careful with my personal data in a way few people are. The thieves couldn’t open credit card accounts in my name because of the freeze, but because BofA didn’t do the minimum due diligence to verify who these people were…SEVEN TIMES!…they escaped seven times, when they might have been caught with even just a signature verification, taken into custody, and those fake licenses in my name put into a police evidence locker.
I just got an e-mail from Chris Hoofnagle at Berkeley Law, an expert in this area, who warned me that the thief could be arrested for a crime while carrying my ID and it could stick to me, at least for a while. I am so screwed in so many ways because of BofA’s spectacular negligence. Please spread the word so others might be prevented from going through what I am. Just the loss in peace of mind every week, worrying what the ID in my name might be used for next, is tremendous for somebody like me.