If you close your account because some jerk stole your student loan payment check and is trying to cash it, you might want to switch banks. Otherwise, Bank of America might helpfully link your new account to your old one so the #%@$# can still cash the stolen check.

From the Chicago Tribune:

So when I received an answering machine message early last month from a woman named Josephine who claimed to work for Bank of America Corp., I thought I knew just what was going on.

This was one of those “phishing” scams, I thought, in which a thief pretends to be a bank representative and gathers personal information from unsuspecting victims.

I wasn’t going to take the bait.

But as it turned out, I already had been had.

Someone had stolen an envelope containing a bill payment that I had left for the mail carrier on my front porch. My $200 check to a student loan vendor had been altered. It was now a $600 check to a stranger, who scrawled in the memo line that it was for maintenance and labor.

Bank of America refused to take the check, photocopying the fraudster’s license, but letting him leave with the stolen check. The reporter closed his account, got new one with B of A, and placed a security alert on his credit report. He then filed a police report.

Did that stop the bad guy? Nope. He simply went to another Bank of America, cashed the check and $600 was taken from our Hero’s brand new account. But how?
“And even though our old account was closed, the bank had withdrawn the money out of the new one.” Good job, Bank of America. —MEGHANN MARCO

Fraud hits home — my front porch! [Chicago Tribune]
(Photo: Meghann Marco)

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