Our customer became aware his debit card was missing and notified the bank in a timely manner. He soon learned of numerous charges that he claims he did not authorize. The issue here is that the customer doesn't truly remember the situation. He was inebriated the night before, he told the bank of his whereabouts and his outing, and he provided the last card transaction he remembered. The customer believes someone took advantage of his inebriation or possibly drugged him to get his card and PIN number. There were several ATM transactions, which the customer says he had no cash and no card. There were also large dollar transactions to Wal-Mart. The transactions total over $3,000.

I feel the customer had to have provided his PIN in order for whomever to have made these transaction, thus he authorized someone to use the card. There was no mention of force or robbery or anything of that nature. I don't feel that the bank should be responsible in paying this claim. I would appreciate other's opinions greatly.

Thank you!

Emily - We had this very same instance (including the Walmart transactions) occur twice in the last 6 months. Once over Super Bowl weekend and the other around St. Patrick's day. All of the fraud claimed transactions occurred overnight at the ATMs and in store. We had pictures in one case that showed the ATM transaction was clearly not the customer. In both cases, the customers filed police reports on the incident and insisted they did not provide the card nor PIN to anyone. After much internal debate and research, we paid the claims. Despite our suspicion that the cardholder may have been complicit in the activity, we didn't feel we had solid reason to claim they were authorized. True the crook had the PIN - and quite possibly got it from the cardholder somehow. But we came back to customer negligence is not a reason for denying an otherwise valid EFT claim. Very tough situations.

Thank you! We have reached out to the other bank to get footage to confirm the ATM transactions was not our customer and are waiting at this point for the results of that before making any final decision as we have just started this investigation. I understand consumer negligence isn't grounds to increase their liability but the fact is we don't know if the authorization were authorized or not. They likely were since the PIN was used, but whether the customer was able to make an informed decision at the time to allow someone to use his device is another issue. It is a tough call on this one. I appreciate you feedback!

Keep in mind a customer can literally write his PIN on his card, lay it on top of the ATM and still be liable only for $50. Just because a PIN was entered in no way identifies a transaction as authorized. It isn't up to the customer to prove fraud, it is up to the bank to prove it isn't.

Very good point.

Thanks!