Today more than ever, consumers need to be aware of fraud and scams which are becoming more prevalent with technology.
One Lakewood resident was defrauded thousands of dollars when a fraudster used his bank account and routing numbers to make out checks.
The scammer used a different name, different bank name, and even different signatures on the checks to make out checks totaling over $15,000 dollars.
The account holder tells TLS the funds were in fact withdrawn from his account, something he realized when his checks began bouncing. So he called the bank.
“When I called the bank, they said, oh, yes, the account was frozen.”
The customer says he didn’t receive a clear answer as to why he wasn’t immediately notified by the bank, but to their credit, the fraud was caught and account was locked.
The funds were returned by the bank, but the victim hopes this serves as a reminder about the importance of continuously checking your accounts to ensure there is no irregular activity.
You might want to redact the bank acct info on these checks to prevent further fraud
The account is no longer active.
If you are business ask your bank about SAFEPAY or maybe other security features which will solve such issues.
Security features are useless when they are producing their own checks.
The way safepay works is your send the bank a special file that says the check number and the amount the check was for. If this does not match it does not process the check. Call your bank for more info.
I had the same story with a $50k check!! Thankfully, Chase sent me an alert so I was able to stop it before it cleared on their end. But the money had already been pulled from my account.
just happened to me. 2 checks cleared about 1800 each one
I suppose a check is called a “check’ because we need to “check” on who’s using our checking account.
I’m glad he was refunded the money by the bank.