A couple weeks ago I noticed two withdrawals from my checking account that I did not make. There was an $876.32 payment to a Target Card Services and a $348.94 payment to Credit One Bank. I caught them when I did my daily download of transactions to my Quicken accounting software.
These mistakes were obvious. I have about 30 credit cards, but neither one of those bad boys. The transactions also had the name of the person whose account was being paid – which I omitted here. I did not know that person.
A quick phone call to my bank and those transactions were put in dispute. They told me the matter would be resolved in two weeks (assuming I wasn’t trying to hustle them). Had I needed those funds returned immediately, I could have pursued that. Instead, I put a note in my Quicken for two weeks later to look for a deposit of $1,225.26 – which showed up.
What happened? It was an ACH transfer which means it was an online transaction (not a fake physical check). My bank confirmed that it did not originate from my account. In other words, they did not have my username and password. In the interest of not educating potential scammers, I’m not going to tell you how they might have pulled this off.
Bottom line: Check your bank statements or Quicken downloads for anything weird. My bank allows a 60 day window to dispute a transaction. If I had not caught it, I would have been out $1,225.26.
In this post, I go into depth about what i like about Quicken. You might like it too!
Loved the story of the $1,225.26 caper Chip..good words to the wise!
Thanks Tom!
You seem like a nice person and so I’m sorry they took your money from you.