topic Re: Check your bank statements! in Community Chat

Check your bank statements!

Seannie — Wed, 12 May 2021 19:50:37 GMT

We just found out that our credit union paid the IRS an automatic payment from our joint checking account. Turns out another customer put our account number on their tax form and apparently neither the credit union nor US Treasury checks the name! Or SSN!

Yikes, now we've requested some back statements to check charges. Honestly, if the merchant is one we do business with, we don't double check the amount. But now, we will be scrutinizing much more closely. So much for trusting financial institutions, lesson learned.

Has anything like this happened to you?

Seannie

Re: Check your bank statements!

golding76 — Wed, 12 May 2021 19:55:13 GMT

Yes. Not the same but similar.

Last tax season (July 2020), our accountant put someone else's bank account number in place of my son's. Since my son had to pay the government a tidy sum, this would have been an unhappy development for the other party. However, my son caught the error when reviewing his documents for approval.

Re: Check your bank statements!

Mz iMac — Wed, 12 May 2021 20:11:43 GMT

@Seannie "Turns out another customer put our account number on their tax form"

Did your credit union explain how that customer got YOUR acct #?

Re: Check your bank statements!

haddon9 — Wed, 12 May 2021 21:32:31 GMT

@Seannie Was it Navy Federal Credit Union? While the people in customer service have been very nice & patient, they have really made an awful number of mistakes!

My mother who is very ill has an account with them. She has aides to help her. She recently let an aide go and replaced her with someone else. She called on 4/14 (we were there listening) to stop automatic payment to the aide that was being let go. Well they never did and this person got an extra 3 weeks....$3500.00!! I am livid!

In addition, we signed another aide up and they made an error with her account number....one less zero and she never got paid. So at first I thought that I had put down the incorrect number, I checked the photo of the application that I had entered. I was correct and they made the mistake.

I have an authorization to check her account online. I see that scheduled direct deposits have suddenly disappeared!

Meanwhile my brother and I are trying to get POA or joint ownership since mom is now in the hospital and is about to go on hospice care. This would be the only way they would speak with us to straighten out the mess!

This is all so frustrating and I can't understand how a financial institution can make so many errors!

Re: Check your bank statements!

deeva — Wed, 12 May 2021 21:37:48 GMT

Not to me, but to my Dad. His bank withdrew $25k from his checking account. If I hadn't been monitoring his accounts, he would have lost his money.

Found out that they debited his account instead of another customer who had made a withdrawal.

Re: Check your bank statements!

MamaWick — Wed, 12 May 2021 22:18:23 GMT

I check our accounts every day.

Re: Check your bank statements!

deepwaterdotter — Wed, 12 May 2021 22:40:41 GMT

@MamaWick wrote:
I check our accounts every day.

Me too.

Re: Check your bank statements!

Bri369 — Wed, 12 May 2021 22:49:43 GMT

I check every account daily. Anything out of the ordinary, I would catch.

Re: Check your bank statements!

chickenbutt — Wed, 12 May 2021 22:48:47 GMT

I also keep up on my checking accounts. Probably not every day but I also have everything set, on both of my checking accounts and my credit cards, to where I get an email (you can do text, too, but I choose email) every time a charge happens when I'm not in person using the card.

One odd thing happened once - last year, some charges from my dentist's office I gave one of my checking acct #s because, for some reason that day, they couldn't just process a card. I kept waiting to see that charge come through and it never did so I called them to see what was going on.

It turned out that somehow or other they made an error on the digits (I'm 100% I gave the correct info) and I guess it was coming out of somebody else's account because, although it never came out of my acct, it showed PIF on their end. That was weird and nobody ever came forward to challenge it. I gave the numbers again and it got fixed.

Re: Check your bank statements!

riley1 — Wed, 12 May 2021 22:52:19 GMT

@Seannie - If you do online banking, you can to your account and pull up and print your statements or just check them.

Re: Check your bank statements!

riley1 — Wed, 12 May 2021 22:53:59 GMT

While I haven't had this happen, I did have a check withdrawn from my account twice. Thank goodness I check my accounts all the time. Took the statement over to the bank and within 24 hrs had the one withdrawal redeposited to my account.

Re: Check your bank statements!

CelticCrafter — Wed, 12 May 2021 23:47:27 GMT

@Mz iMac wrote:
@Seannie "Turns out another customer put our account number on their tax form"
Did your credit union explain how that customer got YOUR acct #?

That could be an honest mistake of someone entering just 1 wrong number.

Re: Check your bank statements!

Tinkrbl44 — Thu, 13 May 2021 19:10:34 GMT

@deeva wrote:
Not to me, but to my Dad. His bank withdrew $25k from his checking account. If I hadn't been monitoring his accounts, he would have lost his money.

Found out that they debited his account instead of another customer who had made a withdrawal.

@deeva

Obviously I don't know the details, but having a balance of more then $25k in a checking account doesn't seem like a very good idea. There should be more protection against withdrawing large amounts in any account .... even if the account in question was FDIC insured. JMO

Re: Check your bank statements!

Seannie — Thu, 13 May 2021 12:45:37 GMT

OP here. When I called the credit union, they would not give me the other customers name. I was given very little info, period.

I think it may be someone has an account number close to mine and made a mistake entering it when paying their taxes. Nonetheless, it WAS several thousand dollars and I would like to never have it happen again.

The credit union has me fill out an affadavit online stating that it isn't mine. However, when the credit union charges it back to the US Treasury, I hope they say it was the wrong customers account.

I would hate for this joker to try to push payment through again on MY account.

Once maybe is a mistake, if it happens again I may file a police report. Husband is incredibly furious.

So sorry to hear about your losses--this is stress nobody needs.

Seannie

Re: Check your bank statements!

depglass — Thu, 13 May 2021 13:09:07 GMT

This thread has jarred me awake. I have too much trust in computers and am forgetting that they are operated by humans.

Re: Check your bank statements!

Nannerbelles — Thu, 13 May 2021 13:17:30 GMT

@Mz iMac I have worked in banking for the last 47 years. Account numbers can be very similiar like a digit or two different. If someone fills out a form and writes their account number down wrong it could be another legitimate account number. With all of the electronic banking happening now everyone really needs to monitor their accounts. I used to work in the bank call center and you would not believe what people call in about and they have no idea what their account number even is. Whisle all of the electronic payments and so forth are convenient people need to monitor their accounts. At least at the financial instution that I work at we are very good at making things right for our client if something like this happens.

Re: Check your bank statements!

SeaMaiden — Thu, 13 May 2021 13:46:40 GMT

I check my accounts everyday. And My bank notifies me of any transaction immediately via email.

Re: Check your bank statements!

Carolina925 — Thu, 13 May 2021 13:53:49 GMT

I worked in banking from the time I was 17 years old and always am so surprised that people don't check their accounts. Now, more than ever, it's important to keep up with them. With banking being electronic now, it's really easy to make mistakes. When I started in banking, people checked every single check that went through; now debits can go through with no signature, no current date, not made payable to the depositor, etc., etc. Funny thing: I once had a deposit put into my account that I knew it wasn't mine. It was very difficult to get the bank to make the correction; they didn't believe me

Re: Check your bank statements!

FS74 — Thu, 13 May 2021 14:12:41 GMT

I am meticulous when it comes to banking and credit card statements. Years ago when I mailed checks, one mortgage payment went to a different account. I had the cancelled check and called the mortgage company and bank to fix the error.

Then about 6 months ago I had some restaurant charges on my credit card from 3 places in western Ohio. I live in PA. That was fixed, I even called the restaurants to let them know about the fraudulant charges.

Pays to check (pardon the pun) all the time.

Re: Check your bank statements!

qualitygal — Thu, 13 May 2021 14:59:15 GMT

@Seannie wrote:
OP here. When I called the credit union, they would not give me the other customers name. I was given very little info, period.
I think it may be someone has an account number close to mine and made a mistake entering it when paying their taxes. Nonetheless, it WAS several thousand dollars and I would like to never have it happen again.
The credit union has me fill out an affadavit online stating that it isn't mine. However, when the credit union charges it back to the US Treasury, I hope they say it was the wrong customers account.
I would hate for this joker to try to push payment through again on MY account.

Once maybe is a mistake, if it happens again I may file a police report. Husband is incredibly furious.

So sorry to hear about your losses--this is stress nobody needs.

Seannie

Hopefully you're getting a new acct., number now. If the bank didn't say, you should.