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Like the phone company (but not as severe), you may have someone's old bank account number or they may have yours, without even knowing that fact!
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Who else had your bank account number?
Financial firms often recycle them, Bay Area man finds
David Lazarus
Wednesday, January 5, 2005
Dennis Yu, a programmer at Sunnyvale's Yahoo Inc., learned the hard way that because banks don't have enough account numbers to go around, they quietly recycle numbers that belonged to past customers.
Most banks insist that the practice poses no danger to current customers. However, checks bearing Yu's Bank of America account number but someone else's name and address started popping up among Bay Area merchants shortly before Christmas.
Yu, 30, a Mountain View resident, found himself on the hook for nearly $700 in purchases. Those purchases, he discovered, may have been made by the person who previously held his account number.
"I had no idea this was even possible," Yu said.
The case, consumer advocates say, represents a wake-up call for both the banking industry and customers who may not scrutinize their billing statements.
"It's more troubling than the recycling of telephone numbers, which goes on as well," said Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a San Diego advocacy group. "It's akin to identity theft and can affect people's credit ratings.
"This bodes ill for consumers, no doubt about it," she said. "It requires everyone to be all the more vigilant."
Yu discovered while banking online in mid-December that someone had been writing checks on his account. It wasn't hard to spot: Yu used the account only for electronic payments; he never wrote checks.
"My first thought was that I didn't remember buying all this stuff," he said.
Then he realized the problem was worse than that.
The cleared checks, copies of which were available online, included one for $207.63 at Target, one for $61.28 at Home Depot and one for $258.74 at Jeans Plus, a San Jose clothing store.
All three were written on Dec. 14. Two other electronic payments using the account, totaling $155, had been made to wireless carrier Sprint several days earlier.
The checks were all signed "Johnny Carbajal." Carbajal's name and San Jose address and phone number also were printed on each check.
Yu immediately contacted Bank of America and said he learned that his checking account number previously belonged to a Johnny Carbajal, who had closed his account in 2001.
"I was told that the bank only has so many account numbers," Yu said. "They could retool their system to add more digits, but that would probably cost millions. They recycle numbers instead."
Betty Riess, a Bank of America spokeswoman, declined to discuss details of Yu's situation. But she acknowledged that BofA routinely recycled checking account numbers among customers. She called this "a fairly standard industry practice."
"Account numbers are recycled because there are technical limits on the amount of numbers available," Riess said. "There are a limited number of numbers."
She said increasing the number of digits "would need a major systems overhaul."
Wells Fargo & Co. and Citibank also recycle checking account numbers, representatives of each bank said. They declined to say what percentage of current customers might hold recycled account numbers.
The banks also declined to discuss specifics of their account-recycling programs, citing security considerations. In some cases, though, numbers may be reused if an account has been inactive for as little as three years.
"I've been in banking since 1990, and I've never heard of a problem with this before," said Janis Tarter, a Citibank spokeswoman.
Be that as it may, Yu promptly closed his checking account, and BofA compensated him for all the checks signed with Carbajal's name.
Reached this week, Carbajal acknowledged in a brief interview (before hanging up and not returning subsequent calls) that he had closed a BofA checking account several years ago.
He said he'd gone through a number of accounts at other banks since then. "I've had many accounts," Carbajal said. "I couldn't find one of those (Bank of America) checks if I tried looking."
He suggested that someone might have been passing checks in his name.
"This has nothing to do with me," Carbajal said. "Just because someone was doing this, it doesn't mean it was me."
Ahmed Hadi, the owner of Jeans Plus, said that when the purchase for almost $259 was made at his store on Dec. 14, he made an exception to his usual no-checks policy because he recognized the buyer as a regular customer.
That customer, he said, was Carbajal.
"I asked to see his driver's license," Hadi said. "It matched everything on the check -- his name, his address. The photo was correct. I looked at it very close. I didn't see anything wrong with it."
Hadi wrote the license number on the check as a precaution.
A spokeswoman for the California Department of Motor Vehicles confirmed this week that the license number written on the check belongs to Carbajal.
Yu asked the Mountain View Police Department to look into the matter. Joanne Pasternack, a department spokeswoman, said an investigator had attempted to telephone both Carbajal and BofA and had come up short on both counts.
"The case is closed," she said.
Yu isn't sure what to do now.
"I need a new checking account," he said, "but I don't want another recycled number. What's to stop this from happening again?"
The short answer: nothing.
David Lazarus' column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He also can be seen regularly on KTVU's "Mornings on 2." Send tips or feedback to [email protected].<br />
Source
**************************************************
Who else had your bank account number?
Financial firms often recycle them, Bay Area man finds
David Lazarus
Wednesday, January 5, 2005
Dennis Yu, a programmer at Sunnyvale's Yahoo Inc., learned the hard way that because banks don't have enough account numbers to go around, they quietly recycle numbers that belonged to past customers.
Most banks insist that the practice poses no danger to current customers. However, checks bearing Yu's Bank of America account number but someone else's name and address started popping up among Bay Area merchants shortly before Christmas.
Yu, 30, a Mountain View resident, found himself on the hook for nearly $700 in purchases. Those purchases, he discovered, may have been made by the person who previously held his account number.
"I had no idea this was even possible," Yu said.
The case, consumer advocates say, represents a wake-up call for both the banking industry and customers who may not scrutinize their billing statements.
"It's more troubling than the recycling of telephone numbers, which goes on as well," said Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a San Diego advocacy group. "It's akin to identity theft and can affect people's credit ratings.
"This bodes ill for consumers, no doubt about it," she said. "It requires everyone to be all the more vigilant."
Yu discovered while banking online in mid-December that someone had been writing checks on his account. It wasn't hard to spot: Yu used the account only for electronic payments; he never wrote checks.
"My first thought was that I didn't remember buying all this stuff," he said.
Then he realized the problem was worse than that.
The cleared checks, copies of which were available online, included one for $207.63 at Target, one for $61.28 at Home Depot and one for $258.74 at Jeans Plus, a San Jose clothing store.
All three were written on Dec. 14. Two other electronic payments using the account, totaling $155, had been made to wireless carrier Sprint several days earlier.
The checks were all signed "Johnny Carbajal." Carbajal's name and San Jose address and phone number also were printed on each check.
Yu immediately contacted Bank of America and said he learned that his checking account number previously belonged to a Johnny Carbajal, who had closed his account in 2001.
"I was told that the bank only has so many account numbers," Yu said. "They could retool their system to add more digits, but that would probably cost millions. They recycle numbers instead."
Betty Riess, a Bank of America spokeswoman, declined to discuss details of Yu's situation. But she acknowledged that BofA routinely recycled checking account numbers among customers. She called this "a fairly standard industry practice."
"Account numbers are recycled because there are technical limits on the amount of numbers available," Riess said. "There are a limited number of numbers."
She said increasing the number of digits "would need a major systems overhaul."
Wells Fargo & Co. and Citibank also recycle checking account numbers, representatives of each bank said. They declined to say what percentage of current customers might hold recycled account numbers.
The banks also declined to discuss specifics of their account-recycling programs, citing security considerations. In some cases, though, numbers may be reused if an account has been inactive for as little as three years.
"I've been in banking since 1990, and I've never heard of a problem with this before," said Janis Tarter, a Citibank spokeswoman.
Be that as it may, Yu promptly closed his checking account, and BofA compensated him for all the checks signed with Carbajal's name.
Reached this week, Carbajal acknowledged in a brief interview (before hanging up and not returning subsequent calls) that he had closed a BofA checking account several years ago.
He said he'd gone through a number of accounts at other banks since then. "I've had many accounts," Carbajal said. "I couldn't find one of those (Bank of America) checks if I tried looking."
He suggested that someone might have been passing checks in his name.
"This has nothing to do with me," Carbajal said. "Just because someone was doing this, it doesn't mean it was me."
Ahmed Hadi, the owner of Jeans Plus, said that when the purchase for almost $259 was made at his store on Dec. 14, he made an exception to his usual no-checks policy because he recognized the buyer as a regular customer.
That customer, he said, was Carbajal.
"I asked to see his driver's license," Hadi said. "It matched everything on the check -- his name, his address. The photo was correct. I looked at it very close. I didn't see anything wrong with it."
Hadi wrote the license number on the check as a precaution.
A spokeswoman for the California Department of Motor Vehicles confirmed this week that the license number written on the check belongs to Carbajal.
Yu asked the Mountain View Police Department to look into the matter. Joanne Pasternack, a department spokeswoman, said an investigator had attempted to telephone both Carbajal and BofA and had come up short on both counts.
"The case is closed," she said.
Yu isn't sure what to do now.
"I need a new checking account," he said, "but I don't want another recycled number. What's to stop this from happening again?"
The short answer: nothing.
David Lazarus' column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He also can be seen regularly on KTVU's "Mornings on 2." Send tips or feedback to [email protected].<br />
Source