Bank fraud dealings, or why I have pulled all the hair out of my head

Not many things can grab your attention first thing in the morning like checking your bank website and seeing that somehow over $3,000 has been taken out of your savings account and transferred into an investment company you have never had anything to do with.

Lots of questions come to your stunned and flabbergasted mind at that moment. Who is this company? How could they just take out all that money? Will I be able to get it back? Where do I start?

Clicking around on the site, I see that if I have a question about my account, I should call the number on the back of my credit card. This I do – and in the great tradition of Customer Non-service I am treated to a progression of welcomes, followed by information about taxes, and finally a list of possible places I can go if I press 1 or 2 or 3. And finally, at the end, “If you’d like to speak to a customer service representative, please press zero.” (Why isn’t that at the beginning of the list?)

So, pressing zero, I am immediately connected halfway around the world to a guy in India. Really, I have nothing against the Indian people – they have a wonderful culture and due to Great Britain’s long stay there, we share a language. But I, and perhaps you as well, have a difficult time understanding their dialect. Yet India is the location of most, if not all, primary-level phone-in customer service reps. (Another frustrated – Why?)

So I’m having my usual difficulties understanding the man – who must be at home as I can hear his television in the background. He listens to my situation, asks me a few questions, I ask him to repeat what he said, he does, and I answer with what I think is a logical reply. After a few more similar exchanges he says he is very sorry for the fraud problem I am having, but he can’t really help me with that so he must forward my call to someone who can.

I wait. I get forwarded. Same situation. Same difficulties.

I’m forwarded again, and again(!), and once more but this time – this time!! – while waiting for the next voice to come on, I get a dial tone.

Cut off. (Yet another – WHY?)

I take a break. I really need it. While I am recovering, I think to ask AI on my Copilot app for a reliable, higher-level, Customer Service number for my bank. He (at least I think he is a he) gives me one and it is a slightly different experience. Still an Indian connection, but I get helped and am able to go through the steps needed to make a claim against the illegitimate debit on our account, and to block the company from access to it.

But there is more to this story.

I have to wait on some forms that I must fill out and return regarding the claim. So, nine or 10 times, I have gotten an email saying there is an very important letter in my online bank mailbox. I check. Of course, there is nothing there. (Why not?!?)

Also – just to top things, the next morning upon logging on to my bank website, another surprise: $1,340 had been removed from a different account – checking, this time – which I had not seen the day before. And so the process begins again. (Why, oh why, oh why?)

All this led to a visit to our bank branch to have both affected accounts closed and to open new ones.

Questions remain, of course. Mainly, how did someone get the information they needed to transfer money out of our accounts to open investment accounts in my wife’s name?

Keep an eye on your accounts, my friend!

Ken Klingenmeier is known in the pages of The Reporter for his reviews of local theater productions in the Greater Indianapolis area, which you can read on his blog, A Seat on the Aisle. He also occasionally opines on other topics.