Chase Theft Update

Chase just made a "temporary credit deposit" to my accounts restoring the money that was stolen.  Temporary, as they're still investigating and reserve the right to pull it all back out pending their determination and decision on the matter, which is not happy-making and leading to more grey hairs.

Police are also investigating, and I made the appropriate report to the Bar Association re the matter.

New checks for the new account numbers should be arriving today.

Currently watching all accounts like a hawk on a more than daily basis.

I have created a savings account to sequester some operating account funds and Chase allows up to six transfers from savings back to Operating without a charge, so it will take some care and planning.  I've been assured there cannot be an ACH pull from the savings account but, well, it's Chase, so I may get a different answer from another rep.  

Unfortunately, I can't do that to the IOLTA account as there is no such thing as an IOLTA savings account, nor does Chase offer the ability to block ACH withdrawals from an IOTA account even though they have the technical ability to do so but will not offer that service to this account. This is unfortunate as I'd prefer to safeguard my client's money even more strictly than my own.  I relayed that to the Bar and the Bar Rep is going to be contacting Chase to ask why IOLTA accounts don't get that kind of protection, as apparently the number one method of theft from IOLTA accounts is now via ACH. On top of that, the number one serious attorney violation with IOLTA accounts is now some attorneys with gambling problems using ACH at Casinos to drain IOLTA accounts to feed their habit - that should not be allowed to happen.

So, after over 20 hours of calls, meetings, completing and submitting forms and doing more forms, and emails with Chase, the Police, the Bar, etc it seems to be stabilizing. 

Assuming Chase doesn't make a sudden reversal and yank the funds and induce a heart attack, I should be good to go from here on out.  Also I'm checking into other banks/credit unions to see if they are rated for IOLTA accounts and can offer higher security and less visibility compared to Chase.

Most importantly, I'd like to extend my gratitude to those of my friends/readers who on reading of the attack immediately contacted me to offer loans to tide us over while this was being sorted out. 

I didn't need them as our personal funds in a different institution were still intact, and we had reserve emergency funds so I could skip a paycheck, and still cover what was coming out while getting this fixed.   But, you folks - and you know who you are - immediately jumped in to offer help, and I'm extremely grateful to you for doing so. Thank you.

How Very Not Good

Apparently, every happy event must be matched with a not-so-happy event.

Well, my business accounts at Chase got hacked at around 5:30 last night and they had a lot of money taken out via ACH and no one at Chase is telling me how it happened. Good thing I happened to check the account as In was finishing work at 6 and saw it - aside from the heart attack from seeing it that is.

Apparently it was not a password breach as my password and even the username for the business have been changed before this occurred, shared with no one, I do regular weekly anti-virus and malware scans are done on my computer, I don't go to strange sites on this computer, and they're not saying there was any suspicious sign-ons at all, so it's likely they got in some other way - but Chase is not saying.

The scumbags somehow managed to do online transfers to take money out of my account and send it to Discover and to Voyager (apparently some kind of crypto-currency thing) incredibly quickly and without so much as a by your leave.

Chase security last night was decidedly unhelpful.  It appears their call center is off-shore and while they were a bit hard to understand and times it seemed they didn't understand much either.  You would think the security division would be a bit more competent.  Over three hours on the phone and I ended up feeling worse rather than better and now believe the bank's security for its customers  from such acts is somewhere from inadequate to non-existent.

The person on the phone stated that if someone has the routing number and account number they can wire money out of the account no problem.  Since that information is on every check that's rather worrisome and there better be better safeguards.  The criminal made to minor deposits of a few cents each and then immediately pulled out a lot of money from the account in two big pulls which is rather bad as that's got me in a bad spot.

The person on the phone then stated it was ok and she would do the dispute claims contesting it for me but I should go into a branch to change the account numbers when they open this morning.

Welp, wouldn't you know the person on the phone did not actually do a dispute claim for the monies that were taken out.  Oh, no  - she did it only for the two tiny deposits put into the account!   Both I and the Branch Manager looked at each other in disbelief when we found that out.

So  I'm rather hosed as it will be at least 15 days to process the claim and return the money at  the earliest.  My account numbers , and username and password have all been changed so I have no checks to pay the bills that are coming up and need to order new ones and it's a rather problematic mess having to change all sorts of things including everything that is linked to those accounts.