It's the most unnerving story imaginable for a bank customer -- money disappearing from their account. A mysterious transaction, and no recourse. All the money, simply gone.
The case of Joe Lopez, detailed Tuesday by "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams," is just one example. Lopez lost $90,000 when an unauthorized wire transfer moved the funds from his small business account to a bank account in Latvia. As a small business account holder, Lopez has fewer rights than consumers would if facing the same situation. But the story highlights increasing concern over the way financial institutions verify just who is moving money around their systems.
Online banking is increasingly popular in the United States. This year, about 55 million people will bank online, according to analyst firm Gartner. But the system is fraught with perils.
Chief among them are phishing e-mails that trick consumers into giving away their bank login information or other personal data. Nearly 2 million consumers said they'd fallen for the trick during one 12-month period, Gartner analyst Avivah Litan said earlier this year. It's not clear how many of them suffered an eventual attack on their online bank accounts, Litan said, but the stolen information is clearly valuable to would-be criminals.
While consumers who do suffer account losses are often refunded the money, there's still paperwork headaches to deal with, and not everyone does recover everything they've lost.
"In most cases, especially those involving credit card fraud, consumers get their money back pretty easily," she said. "But in other cases, like new account fraud or illegal transfers, it's not so simple and consumers often can lose out. They need to be aware of the holes in the system that are more apparent than ever with all the electronic doors into and out of their bank accounts."
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