"When it comes to fraud, it’s easy to say, “That will never happen to me.” That’s exactly what one Choice Bank customer thought--until a check for more than $40,000, written out to an unfamiliar name, cleared his account."
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Choice Banks People First Podcast Episode eight Hi and Thanks for Joining Us for choice Banks, People First Podcast Series. Every year we sift through hundreds of stories, all featuring the wonderful things that happen when our team members put people first. We've selected a few of her favorites and turned them into podcast, and we're so excited to share this one with you. Keep listening with hacking schemes and mass data breaches so common in the news these days, there's a popular saying in the banking world when it comes to fraud. It's not a matter of if it's a matter of one for one of Christine allows customers. This saying became a harsh reality and a hard earned lesson. I had talked with him before about risk of check fraud, but he always would say, It's never gonna happen to me. It's never gonna happen. Me Well, on May 29th it did happen to him. In this story, three choice bank employees joing forces across departments and work as a team to prevent a customer from falling victim to a massive fraud attempt. Please note that our customer's name has been changed to protect his privacy. It all started around five o'clock on a typical Monday when Cristina, Senior Deposit Service's account manager at Choice Banks Egan location, received an urgent call. It was wrong business customers she's worked with regularly in the past. We'll call him Dale. Dale told her that a check for $43,842.32 written out to an unfamiliar name had cleared his account, He said. When he was reconcile eyeing his accounts, he saw check clear, and it was only supposed to be for $3820.32. However, it was instead washed for $43,000 he was very concerned. I told them that we're working on it, but there's no guarantee we can get that money back, but we will try. That's Christina. She spends her days helping customers, set up accounts and making sure they have all the tools they need to be successful and protected. When Dale told her about the suspicious check, her fraud buster instincts kicked in immediately, and she reached out to Transaction service's supervisor, Andy Carroll. After a bit of investigative work, Andy and his team discovered that the check had been washed. An old school fraud tactic. Here's Andy.
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Check Washing is what some ill intending individual thinks that they in one past the bank by literally using special chemicals to wash the cup of certain areas of a check. So you end up with a legitimate check that a company printed with a new baby name on the front and or a new mountains on front.
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In this case, the check had originally been written for $3842.32 to a vendor of Dale's. The fraudster washed the check to not only add their names, but an additional four to the beginning of the amount. With previous experience tackling this kind of fraud under his belt and he left into action, he knew that regulations allowed banks a very short window of time to send the check back just 24 hours after a check clears an account. There was just one problem. Check actually cleared his account on May 29th but he contacted us on June 3rd. They were three business days past the return deadline, but Andy refused to give up after some more digging, he found out the wash check had been deposited at a small bank in Iowa.
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If Checketts, clearly been altered, tampered with the onus of what was taking that check their certifying that yet this blossoms this 80. It's not all third ballot, and if it turns out a cheque is technically, that bank used to reimburse the bank that wrote the check. Is there region warranty?
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And he knew that time was of the essence. Every minute lost was another minute of anxiety and frustration for his customer.
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After talking with a couple folks over that bank in establishing contact, just send over a claim form that we normally would send a bad every day for a while.
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While Andy worked with the team in Iowa to take care of the reimbursement, Christina turned her attention to making sure her customer was better protected against fraud in the future. That's where Jessica Ballenger, Cash Management Service is supervisor enters the story Within 48 hours of that first phone call with Dale, Jessica and Kristina were able to get him set up and trained on Jack Verify in a ch verify Choice banks risk mitigation tools. Here's Jessica.
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What I explained to him with this allegation products is at the very least, products help streamline and everything and make sure that he doesn't have any pickups and is dating processes like this was ground.
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Two weeks later, Andy's persistence paid off. Dale and his business received a full reimbursement for the wash check from the bank in Iowa.
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We were looking for Mr Relatively quickly. I think we, uh, received reimbursed June 17 two knees.
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Jessica and Kristina were both surprised and relieved when Andy shared the good news to them, and these actions demonstrated an important choice. Bank core value. Commit to our customers with undivided attention.
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Every minute counts. I was really impressed with how quickly Andy Reactive and Hiss dedication, and he's extremely busy with a lot of new staff training things like that. But he still took the time to make sure Oh, well, the second he needed documentation or something he was on. It was sending it to that. We just I was extremely impressive. Help quickly receive the funds back,
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and they weren't the only ones who breathed a sigh of relief when the funds were reimbursed. When they shared the news with Dale. He was
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super, extremely appreciative. I mean, I'm sure the second he saw it in his account, it was just a relief.
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Fraud can happen to anyone at any time, and once it does, there is no guarantee that you will be able to recover the phone's lost. If it weren't for Andy Kristina and Jessica's quick thinking and perseverance, Dale Story could have had a much different ending. It didn't matter that they were from different departments or that the check was past the return deadline. The team never gave up. They committed to Dale with undivided attention and were able to not only return the full amount he had lost but set him up with tools to prevent future fraud. This is what it means to be people first. For tips on protecting yourself against fraud, visit bank with choice dot com slash cybersecurity. Thanks for listening to this people for story Brought to you by Choice Bank. This is just one of so many amazing stories from her team members. You confined pictures from this story or read more stories like it at bank with choice dot com slash people first