Jan 7, 2025
Around Christmas in 2023, someone withdrew $420 from Bev Thompson’s bank account. Despite letting her bank know right away, nearly one year later, Thompson was still out the money.
The situation impacted the Colorado woman’s health so badly that she ended up in the hospital for 10 days and needed to take anti-anxiety pills.
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“All this stuff was so stressful,” Thompson told 9News. “I ended up in the hospital for 10 days. They had to put me on anti-anxiety pills ... and I’m still anxious about it.”
Unfortunately, Thompson’s situation isn’t so uncommon. An estimated 26% of Americans have experienced bank and credit card fraud, according to data from YouGov. But it’s important to know what to do in that situation.
An alarming discovery
Thompson discovered the fraudulent charges from ATMs located inside various Walgreens stores when going through her bank statements in January 2024. Assuming her debit card had been duplicated, she filed a police report and reported the fraud to her bank, GO2Bank.
At first, the money was refunded. But a month later, GO2Bank contacted Thompson saying they’d done an investigation and found that the transactions were legitimate since the ATM card Thompson uses had a chip, which supposedly could not be duplicated. The bank also said that the charges seemed legitimate because they occurred in the vicinity of Thompson’s address.
Thompson fought back, citing reports showing that chip cards can, in fact, be duplicated. She also told her bank that the map they used had inaccuracies.
She even told reporters she tried filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and got confirmation from Walgreens that its ATM had been tampered with. But it wasn't until news reporter Steve Staeger of Steve On Your Side fame got involved that Thompson was able to make any headway.
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What to do if your bank account is raided illegally
Although credit and debit card chips are supposed to protect against fraud, criminals have gotten savvier and can now replicate them via a process known as shimming. A thin device called a shim is placed into an ATM’s card reader to steal chip data. Think of it as a more sophisticated version of skimming, an age-old technique used to steal data that’s embedded in the magnetic strip of credit and debit cards.
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One way to avoid falling victim to shimming — or skimming — is to avoid using your debit card as much as possible in person. Instead, aim to pay for purchases or make transactions using your bank’s mobile app when possible. Or, try to limit ATM withdrawals from your bank’s own network. They’re likely to have more security measures in place than a neighborhood drug store.
If you find that your bank account has been tapped illegally, report the fraud immediately. You have 60 days from when you receive your account statement to loop your bank in, but the sooner you do, the better. That starts the clock for your bank to conduct its own investigation, and it typically gets 10 days to do so. If your bank can’t resolve the issue after 10 days, it’s required to credit your account temporarily and continue investigating for 45 days.
You should also file a report with your local police department and report the incident to the FTC. Be sure to document everything, including all communication with your bank.
And if your bank denies your claim, don’t give up. File a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a watchdog agency that advocates for consumers’ rights.
In the end, after added investigations and intervention on the part of Steve on Your Side, Thompson got her money refunded, and the matter was put to rest. But not everyone has the benefit of a persistent reporter in their corner. So your takeaway should be that if you end up in a similar situation and the matter isn’t resolved to your satisfaction, you shouldn’t hesitate to keep fighting.
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Maurie Backman has been writing professionally for well over a decade. Since becoming a full-time writer, she's produced thousands of articles on topics ranging from Social Security to investing to real estate.
