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All your accounts are at risk

Posted on May 7, 2006 by Tom Fragala

This article on News-Record.com tells a grave tale. A man had over $26,000 drained from a Merrill Lynch financial account (which had check writing capabilities). The criminals wrote fraudulent, counterfeit checks against this account for over a year. Some of the transactions were electronic “demand drafts”—the criminals just gave the account and routing numbers over the phone to pay things. Merril Lynch cleared all the checks and transactions. Merrill Lynch agreed to only pay back $6,000, leaving the victim holding the bag for $20,000. How can that be? Because federal law only protects a victim if they report the fraud within 60 days. The victim wasn’t checking his statements because this is not his regular checking account, it was a special family partnership account. Merrill maintained that the victim was negligent in not checking statements and reporting fraud in a timely manner.

The main lesson here is ALWAYS CHECK YOUR STATEMENTS.