Taking money from my bank acct

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• 0

  tj

  23 Oct 2009

  Small unauthorized $1 charges are often an indication that some scammer is "pinging" your account to see if the number is valid and he can steal larger amounts.
  
  Contact your bank immediately to dispute the fraudulent charges and close the account due to fraud to prevent additional charges in the future.  Follow up promptly with a written dispute to your bank to invoke your FRB Reg. E dispute rights.
  
  Post any name or phone number associated with the charges.
  Even if you are dealing with a scam, searching on the name or number used, even if they are phony, can often turn up other consumer complaints against the same scammers, so you can find out what they are up to.

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• 0

  tj

  23 Oct 2009

  Also be aware that there are a number of suspect "personal banking products" such as "id theft protection", "credit protection", "accident insurance", etc, that are sold by telemarketers using customer lists bought from many of the major banks.  
  
  These types of telemarketing operations have been associated with high levels of consumer complaints of deceptive and fraudulent telemarketing and unauthorized charges.  This type of fraud became so common that FTC passed special rules back in 2003 covering telemarketing using "pre-acquired account information" (customer information and account numbers bought from banks) in an attempt to reduce levels of fraud, but the fraudulent practices continue.
  
  If you find that your bank is not helpful in reversing such fraudulent charges, or just refers you to some other company, it may indicate that your bank has a marketing partnership with the other company, and is interfering with attempts to dispute fraudulent charges that they are profitting from.  Instead, there are reports that banks divert disputes back to the telemarketers, so that they don't have to handle them as fraudulent charges.
  
  If your bank does not cooperate in reversing fraudulent charges, send them a written dispute of the charges, to the dispute address from your statement, and send it certified return receipt requested.  Indicate that the charges are fraudulent, that you did not authorize them, and also note the date on which you first contacted them to report it.
  
  If your bank does not reverse the charges in response to your dispute, file complaints with FTC, your state Attorney General, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.  
  
  Go to www.occ.gov

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