A Fraud Story

Internet banking is very handy. I have been using it for 5 years to pay bills and track expenses. What's really great though is that I can live in Guatemala and maintain an account in Canada without having to walk into a bank.

For two weeks, I went without internet at my home because a part was broken on my ISP's satellite dish. It didn't matter too much because I was busy working with short term teams and I didn't have enough energy to watch a movie in the evenings, let alone do banking.

I did manage to get onto the internet at one point to pay off my credit card balance in mid-March. I have no recollection as to where I did this, though it was probably done at the office. On the same day, an $850 email money transfer was performed on my chequing account without my authorization.

I continued on my whirlwind work weeks without a clue as to the transfer. Finally, once my internet was restored and some personal time too, I sat down to do some banking. I realized that my password didn't work, but I thought that was because I had waited too long to use a special code that my mom had gotten in the mail a while back. I had the code, but I didn't know where to put it, so I phoned my bank.

Password reset, I discovered that there was less money than I had anticipated and I started browsing the transactions in my chequing account and discovered this mysterious email transfer. I was still on the phone with the bank agent and had him investigate.

The agent interrogated me. He gave me the email address the transfer was sent to (something@rogers.com) and it wasn't recognizable. He said the bank would look into it and the investigation could take up to 10 business days.

My online access was denied since then as the bank looked into the transfer. I called them today to see if they had made any progress and they had. I gained access to my account. The $850 was returned to my account last week along with the $1.50 service charge.

That was a flat story, wasn't it? Was there any doubt I would get it back? Bank error in your favour, get your money back. I didn't lose any sleep over it. I didn't call everyday to see how it was going. I just waited for the story to go flat. Maybe I just knew it would all be resolved.