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Way to spot suspicious activity Bank of America...!

chris-hooley.com — I used to think identity theft was just an over-hyped gimmick to get people to pay for credit reports and monitoring. That is, until my checking account was cleared out. Turns out, most major banks are not well equipped to handle ID theft, or even your money for that matter.

Who dugg this? Made popular Jul 26, 2008

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  • inactive, on 07/26/2008, -4/+255Banks don't like to handle my money.

    Probably because I call them everday to verify that I still have a positive balance of $3.62
  • squishee, on 07/25/2008, -4/+171The dude who got busted looks like George Lucas 30 years ago.
  • thedb, on 07/26/2008, -2/+127When I closed my Deutsche Bank account at the end of a semester in Germany, I just handed over my ATM card and they gave me all the money in the account. No ID check. Nothing. Convenience win, utter security fail?
  • amyalkon, on 07/25/2008, -9/+121Anybody who has further stories like this about BofA's tellers giving out their money, please e-mail me at adviceamy at a o l dot com

    -Amy Alkon, syndicated columnist, blogging daily at advicegoddess.com

    (Bank of America's tellers gave a total of $12,000 of my money to thieves in SEVEN separate occasions. No PIN required. No verification that the signature was mine. Just a fake driver's license in my name with the wrong expiration date, and their tellers handed out my money like it was lettuce.)
  • inactive, on 07/26/2008, -7/+118People hand out lettuce? *****, I want in on that.
  • theysayjump, on 07/26/2008, -3/+82People still use AOL?
  • weitips, on 07/25/2008, -9/+79I don't care how many times I compared those pictures, they look EXACTLY the same.
  • fattymcfatfat, on 07/26/2008, -1/+49I never liked Bank of America.. their banks never smelled right.
  • BillE3, on 07/26/2008, -0/+45I dumped B of A for a local independent bank long before I.D. theft was a problem. They always had the worst customer service. It really pissed me off when B of A bought the credit card company I had been using. For the last 4 months I have tried to close that account and they seem to forget.
  • MattNF, on 07/26/2008, -0/+43You can never have too much lettuce.
  • FlaG8r, on 07/26/2008, -4/+44" Turns out, most major banks are not well equipped to handle ID theft..."

    They don't care. It's not their money.
  • TheMachine1, on 07/26/2008, -12/+51For every dollar small time crooks steal big time crooks (that own banks) steal hundreds more.
  • FlamboBlumpkin, on 07/26/2008, -2/+41Oh great, George is here. I can tell because he dugg me down.
  • Harbinger1080, on 07/26/2008, -2/+40Damn, you're right, he IS a thief... robbed me of about $10 each time a Star Wars prequel came out.
  • Bozodog, on 07/26/2008, -2/+37Bank of America is no longer Bank of America.

    It is Nations Bank.

    Bank of America was top rated by Consumer Reports. Nations Bank was rated at the bottom.

    Nations Bank bought Bank of America, took BofA’s name, because Nation’s was worth *****.

    I went into a BofA to do a transaction that I had done dozens of times before. (Cashing a paycheck for an employee of mine who has no bank account, with the employee there with me.) I’ve had an account at BofA since the ‘50’s. The clerk said we can’t do that here. I asked to talk to the manager.

    I told the manager what I wanted to do, that I had done it many times before. The manager said, we have never done that. I said that I had done that many times here. The manager said that was before we were purchased. Nations has never done that.

    Good by BofA.
  • IsaiahCisneroz, on 07/26/2008, -3/+361. Go to Bank of America
    2. Exchange cash for lettuce
    3. ??????
    4. PROFIT
  • lolkittah, on 07/26/2008, -0/+33I've been stunned plenty of times by how easy it is to get a teller to give me my money. I often offer my ID and they look surprised, glance at it, and hand me cash. No prizes for guessing which bank I'm talking about, either.
  • and303, on 07/26/2008, -2/+3540k that easy. Wow.
    Makes me want to switch careers.
  • oldgal, on 07/26/2008, -0/+32watch out - they'll put a fee on calls - if there is a way to get that 3.62 they will get it and tack on overdraft fees and interest.
  • diggdiggdug, on 07/26/2008, -1/+30This guys looks like a druggie, he looks baked. Those tellers had to be numb, dumb and ignorant to not even give him the once over.
    B of A sucks. I dumped them years ago.
  • kgreen69er, on 07/26/2008, -0/+28You can steal you own identity by growing a beard.
  • diamanta25, on 07/26/2008, -3/+31In order to process a cash withdrawal in excess of $10K in one day, BOA, or any financial institution, is required by law to file a Large Currency Transaction Report. The report will usually automatically generate once the transaction is initiated, even if he made a withdrawal of 6,000 in one branch and 6,000 at another the form would have popped up and the customer is supposed to be notified of the report. Signature is supposed to be verified, two forms of ID are usually required as well as several questions asked to verify the identity of the person making the withdrawal. I wonder if BOA ignored this and just made up the information to bypass the form.
  • BlankVerse, on 07/26/2008, -0/+27After B of A messed up my account when I moved, I swore I'd never do business with them or another large, impersonal bank again (luckily I didn't loose any money, but it took almost three weeks to gain access to my money).

    I've been using credit unions almost continuously since then. Reasonable rates, no crazy fees, friendly staff, etc. I'd never go back to using any bank again.
  • JulianLouis, on 07/26/2008, -0/+27Yea but there's a difference between a $500 withdrawal and $26K. If I was taking out $25,000 cash I'd probably be willing to wait a couple minutes for a photo i.d. comparison.
  • inactive, on 07/26/2008, -5/+28Whats funny is if the Banks suddenly required something like a fingerprint , iris scan or other biometric device the same people here bashing the banks would in that thread be crying about PRIVACY!
    ...then go post about it on their MYSPACE, FACEBOOK and personal blog pages.
  • inactive, on 07/26/2008, -3/+24Solution: Have crappy credit, that way if someone tries to steal your identity, they will get deluged with a ton of collection calls.

    That and use offshore banks, it seems like they have more security and like to keep their client's information private unlike most commercial banks that will sell your information to marketing firms including how you spend your money and where you spend you money using your ATM/debit cards and credit cards.
  • Aero347, on 07/26/2008, -0/+21It still affects their bottom line if they put out 40K to a theif.
  • Javamancer, on 07/26/2008, -4/+25First post reply abuse...so sue me. But if the Bank of America required you to provide three forms of ID and wait ten minutes while they checked them out before handing over your own hard earned cash, how many bitchy blog posts would there be moaning about how you feel more like a criminal than a customer?

    I know personal freedoms vs police state authoritarianism is a touchy issue, but I'm willing to bet most people can appreciate the need for a middle ground rather than the more liberal extreme of the two.
  • rajkalex, on 07/26/2008, -0/+20I call BS. I went into BoA just last week asking for lettuce and they just looked at me funny. I'll have to try another branch...
  • Daxx22, on 07/26/2008, -0/+19He DID cancel his cards. The scammer did this WITH the canceled cards because the BoA tellers accepted them at face value, and didn't verify any of the info before handing over the cash.
  • dvdchris, on 07/26/2008, -1/+19What do you expect? It's BOA!
  • MeatPlow, on 07/27/2008, -0/+18How do you sneak up on celery?


    Stalk.
  • Mononuclear, on 07/26/2008, -0/+16Bank tellers make minimum wage. They don't really care about your money or security policies. If they get fired they will just go work at some other minimum wage job.

    The weakest point in security is the person. You can have all sorts of policies and procedures set but if you don't hire highly trained people and make sure they do everything right then you get minimum wage idiots whom you can easily social engineer.
  • lamiaconfitor, on 07/27/2008, -0/+16reminds me of the Louis CK bit, where he does not have enough money.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpaCQKJpE9k
  • Cuchanu, on 07/26/2008, -1/+16Credit Unions are non-profit and available to almost anyone now; so dump BoA, Wells, WaMu, USbank, etc. and get yourself a CU. Everything is better and costs less.
  • rootnik, on 07/26/2008, -9/+25We had our bank card stolen before and BOA noticed it before we did and froze the account, preventing us from losing thousands. There will always be stories like this, but for us they have been great for 10+ years.
  • FlamboBlumpkin, on 07/26/2008, -1/+15Both are pure hotness
  • Chalks777, on 07/26/2008, -2/+16Huzzah for the death of the English language!


    :'(
  • boberto, on 07/26/2008, -2/+15I gotta say, as much as this guy wants to rag on BoA, there are ways you can stop this from happening. I have all kinds of checks on my account. They have to contact me BY PHONE for withdrawals over a certain amount. Hell, I bought a TV the other day and they called me while I was walking out to verify that the transaction was legit. If anything, I think their fraud protection is a bit overkill, but I appreciate the reassurance I have in knowing nobody can touch my ***** without me being alerted right away.

    Also, those additional identity and credit monitoring services are not a bad idea. You can have them call you when anyone runs a credit check on you or tries to open an account. Pretty nice.
  • Meany123, on 07/26/2008, -3/+15No. If you take out that kind of money from an account that doesn't have a history of that, then that is exactly what you do. If it's for 500 bucks, no problem. $5000 however? $5000 after you can clearly see the person also took out multiple thousands *AT ANOTHER BRANCH* earlier in the day? (HUGE red flag goes up here) A couple thousand after you see $26k was just pulled out of an account with no history of large withdrawls, with a total balance of $40k? (HUGE red flag #2)

    Don't be ridiculous. These are like massive, huge, glaring red flags that the piss poor trained employees at BoA didn't bother to follow up on.
  • Ubermann, on 07/26/2008, -2/+14I work in Risk Management for a credit card processor - I am amazed how easily an ID can be stolen and accounts can be opened up at bank to gather the deposits from running stolen cards. Per Section 326 of the PATRIOT Act banks are supposed to verify the ID - but what sloppy work.
  • voyetra8, on 07/26/2008, -1/+13This happened in 1998. Ten years ago.

    A little slow on the uptake, eh?
  • scottc, on 07/26/2008, -0/+12He is in no way responsible - the bank gave his money to someone else. All of the responsibility falls on Bank of America here. He could have done things differently and saved himself some hassles, but that doesn't make it his fault in any way.
  • lazlonger, on 07/26/2008, -0/+12YES! ...a salient comment.

    Does anyone know why BOA did not follow the proper procedure and the result of their actions?
  • upnortherik, on 07/26/2008, -2/+13Honest question: why would you not switch banks after occasion number six?
  • CSHYDRASHOK, on 07/26/2008, -3/+13Anyone ever tell you never put all your eggs into one basket? 40K seems alot to keep in one bank. There are 5 different banks in my small town alone. Still i feel for the guy
  • brbubba, on 07/26/2008, -6/+15The bank screwed up big time, but this guy was sipping martini's around the pool instead of canceling his cards. With 40k in the bank I'd say that was a pretty dumb move. When it's your money involved don't expect other people to be responsible or competent.
  • funkyloki, on 07/26/2008, -0/+8I saw this happen today at my bank. A young man came in and said he lost his wallet, and he needed to withdraw money for the weekend. What's more, he had all kinds of credit cards with his "name" on them, but no ID. They gave him the money.
    Wait, if he lost his wallet how come he still has all the cards he kept in his wallet? And if he had just happened to clean out his wallet before it got stolen, how come he left his ID in the wallet and took everything else out? I know, it made no sense to me either, but they still gave him the money. They even went so far as to ask him if they gave him enough because they would be closed tomorrow (this being Saturday).
    So yes, social engineering works even, and especially, at the teller level.
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