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9:00 pm
September 5, 2023
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1:39 am
November 18, 2017
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Bank-issued cheques have a variety of anti-fraud features, but all the cheque printers have access to them so they may not be so hard to compromise.
About 40 years ago, a bank issued me a mis-coded MICR chequebook. A number of cheques bounced but I wasn't charged as there was no link to my real account, and the payees all were understanding. My, how times have changed!
The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre isn't really an enforcement entity. The RCMP Commercial Crime division SHOULD be prosecuting these cases but they are "very low priority" compared to all the other crime around. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre mostly gathers reports of fraud and distributes warnings and educates about safer practices.
It's really hard to get law enforcement to act on commercial crime. Even big scams like fake investment schemes. They get more heat for drug dealers, human traffickers, psycho attackers and the dreaded family disputes.
RetirEd
6:53 am
March 30, 2017
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althisa said
I have had Simplii credit cards not reach me by mail more than once.
Never had this type of situation at a major bank.Be careful what questions you ask even on this site.
Not everybody who is listening has good intentions.
It's one of the reasons I have become very quiet here.
Simplii is CIBC, not sure if you count CIBC as a major bank or not.
9:52 am
November 5, 2022
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12:11 am
March 3, 2022
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What I find interesting (and telling) is the fact that almost daily I receive mail from banks and FIs scaring me about taking "Fraud" seriously like I'm a child. When, to me, it's now abundantly clear that it's the banks that have more internal staffing rot that they FIRST need to spend resources and focus on.
Banks/FIs must be made to improve the responsibility, quality and training of the staff, as a regulatory requirement. Hiring for cheap, ultimately outsources security to the customers. It's unfair. All the 2FAs and security-code hell won't do a thing if the "call is coming from inside the house" per se!
As I've seen numerous times just on this forum alone (e.g. the Duca employee fraud earlier, and now this, etc), that banks are quick to offload their responsibility by hiding behind P.R. blitzes and gaslighting the customers instead of fulfilling their own fiduciary duties.
It shouldn't be upon good Samaritans like the folks here reporting and warning us all. This is not a charity/nonprofit industry we're talking about. It's the trillion dollar financial industry. And they have calculated that the victims are too small to fight back, etc. They should be made more responsible, and we need far more robust regulations and the media's eyes on them.
11:26 pm
October 21, 2013
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By the time an FI gets around to sending you a "helpful" email about a scam or about precautions you should take, it's usually already common knowledge amongst people who pay any attention to such issues. It gives me the impression that the FIs were the last ones to hear about it! I'm sure that's not true, but they are hardly in the forefront of helping clients stay safe.
Regulation has potential to help, but the banks have very powerful lobbies, and I doubt any regulation ever passes that they haven't been involved in framing and agreed to in advance.
Meanwhile, they are taking away Canadian jobs and outsourcing them to India and so on, where Canadian regulatory influence will be slim. I'd like to see regulation that requires all my financial data must at least be kept in this country. Not gonna happen; the train already left the station. For shame.
12:04 pm
October 4, 2018
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iotama said
What I find interesting (and telling) is the fact that almost daily I receive mail from banks and FIs scaring me about taking "Fraud" seriously like I'm a child. When, to me, it's now abundantly clear that it's the banks that have more internal staffing rot that they FIRST need to spend resources and focus on.Banks/FIs must be made to improve the responsibility, quality and training of the staff, as a regulatory requirement. Hiring for cheap, ultimately outsources security to the customers. It's unfair. All the 2FAs and security-code hell won't do a thing if the "call is coming from inside the house" per se!
As I've seen numerous times just on this forum alone (e.g. the Duca employee fraud earlier, and now this, etc), that banks are quick to offload their responsibility by hiding behind P.R. blitzes and gaslighting the customers instead of fulfilling their own fiduciary duties.
It shouldn't be upon good Samaritans like the folks here reporting and warning us all. This is not a charity/nonprofit industry we're talking about. It's the trillion dollar financial industry. And they have calculated that the victims are too small to fight back, etc. They should be made more responsible, and we need far more robust regulations and the media's eyes on them.
Very well said iotama.
Simplii Financial initial response to me was that someone must have gotten ahold of my cheque book and used a cheque (it was cheque #1 which is funny in itself) when if they just took a second to look at the cheque they could see that the cheque was obviously fake. What doesn't help either is I was told by the CSR that I spoke with that they cannot view an image of the cheque on their end. So what good is that if someone like myself calls them regarding a fraudulent cheque.
"internal staffing rot that they FIRST need to spend resources and focus on". I couldn't agree with this statement any more. How are we supposed to
protect ourselves when Simplii Financial has an internal thief or multiple thieves taking shots due to the lack of accountability/consequences in this country.
In "magicman's" case, someone tried to write a cheque using on his Savings Account that doesn't even have cheques and he was still charged an NSF fee. I mean common, that is seriously laughable!
So I called Equifax on Monday about what happened to me where I got a letter from Simplii Financial about them doing a credit check on me because there was a credit limit increase request on my account and the CSR from Equifax couldn't even give me a Yes or No answer if Simplii Financial were the ones who
actually did this credit check on me. To make a long story short, all Equifax could do was flag my account so if another credit check is done on my account it would get flagged. So to sum it up, Simplii Financial said they never did this credit check on me and Equifax couldn't tell me who did this credit check on me. So I guess you can just do an anonymous credit check on anyone you see fit? I actually asked the CSR from Equifax if you can do that and he didn't know the answer to this question. I also had to provide my SIN over the phone with Equifax which I did not like either but what are you gonna do. I had to if I wanted any sort of resolution from this ordeal.
"It shouldn't be upon good Samaritans like the folks here reporting and warning us all." EXACTLY!
Just another reason why more and more people are getting in Bitcoin and becoming their own bank.
12:24 am
October 4, 2018
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Follow up: A manager from Simplii Financial contacted me over the weekend regarding the $17,000 fraudulent cheque that someone tried to write on my Simplii Financial Chequing Account in February when I moved funds to Simplii Financial from another Financial Institution (Oaken Financial). To make a long story short, Simplii Financial is giving me two years of free credit monitoring with Equifax along with $250 for my headaches/troubles.
7:47 pm
April 6, 2013
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Did Simplii share any details about how your name and corresponding Simplii chequing account number were leaked?
The Equifax credit record monitoring and $250 suggest that Simplii investigated and found something.
Credit checks are not anonymous. Credit bureaus do record who requested the check. Both hard and soft checks are included in the report to the consumer. The report to lenders only has the hard checks.
4:55 am
March 30, 2017
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My experience with credit check agency is whoever you talk to on the phone can NOT see much more than one can see after logging in (even when one has the account).
In other words, the extra info the rep can provide is very limited...
As for offering $250 as compensation, that is weird as most will only give a $5-10 goodwill gesture. $250 is like hush money !
11:49 am
October 4, 2018
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Norman1 said
Did Simplii share any details about how your name and corresponding Simplii chequing account number were leaked?The Equifax credit record monitoring and $250 suggest that Simplii investigated and found something.
Credit checks are not anonymous. Credit bureaus do record who requested the check. Both hard and soft checks are included in the report to the consumer. The report to lenders only has the hard checks.
They didn't share how my name and account were leaked. I don't think they exactly know how it was. When I asked the manager all he said was that it could have been an employee or former employee or something along those lines. It's all speculative.
How do you know for sure that Simplii "found something"? Well they know that I contacted Equifax about this matter. What do you mean by the "soft checks" and "hard checks"? When I spoke with Equifax in March they said that Simplii were the ones who did a credit check but when I spoke with a CSR at Simplii, the CSR said that nothing was showing up on their end as to anyone trying to do a credit check or credit limit increase from Simplii. Then again, I highly doubt those CSR's have much if any authority on what they can see on their end.
Like I stated before, I think an employee from Simplii (either acting alone or relaying this information to an outside accomplice) saw that I transferred funds from another financial institution and took a shot at trying to write a cheque (a very shoddy cheque at that) to withdraw these funds. Anyways, they were super slow on the trigger as I moved these funds from my Simplii Financial Chequing Account to my Simplii Financial High Interest Savings Account fairly quickly. At the end of the day, someone took a shot and whiffed completely.
I'm just sharing my experience with Simplii when I transferred funds there for the 5.50% promotional interest rate in February. I signed up for the free two years of credit monitoring with Equifax that Simplii has offered me and as soon as the $250 hit my account I moved it out immediately and currently have a $0.00 across all accounts there. What else am I supposed to do, hold Simplii ransom for more money/information?? I'm sure this kind of stuff happens every day at financial institutions all across the country and of course they're trying their best to keep it on the DL.
11:56 am
October 4, 2018
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savemoresaveoften said
My experience with credit check agency is whoever you talk to on the phone can NOT see much more than one can see after logging in (even when one has the account).
In other words, the extra info the rep can provide is very limited...As for offering $250 as compensation, that is weird as most will only give a $5-10 goodwill gesture. $250 is like hush money !
Yes exactly, CSR's can't do much of anything for you other than answer fairly generic questions. I knew that I would get some replies like this but like I mentioned directly up above, what else am I supposed to do, demand more money for my troubles? So basically I'm the Stormy Daniels in all of this!
How about this, you guys write out some questions that you want me to ask and I'll call the manager and ask him all the questions and report back with the answers.
As far as keeping a balance at Simplii, that's up to everyone on here. I highly doubt I'll be keeping a balance in there going forward. I just wanted to relay my recent experience with them and what happened to me as this is a forum for sharing information, promotional offers, etc. on financial institutions all across the country.
2:03 pm
November 18, 2017
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It's always worth following up on those post-breach transactions.
I was one of those who had used a credit card at Home Depot before their announcement of a breach and one year of "credit monitoring." (This was some years ago, 2018 as I recall.)
As far as I could tell, the only effect of that monitoring was a warning on my file with the agency that prevented me from making any corrections to my file, changes to credit limits or applications for credit without mailing identity proofs to the agency! Major inconvenience with no noticeable benefit or protection. And the agency wouldn't even tell me what that protection consisted of.
I'd suggest that, if you are given that sort of "protection,' it would be a good idea to plan ahead and allow a few extra weeks for credit changes you may want to make.
RetirEd
9:53 pm
October 21, 2013
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You ask what you're supposed to do in regards to Simplii. My answer would be, "negotiate".
As savemore pointed out, compensation of 250 is a tacit admission that Simplii failed you. A manager has suggested the problem could have been one of their employees! This is not small stuff. It's a serious issue, a criminal issue.
You have no assurance or confidence that it won't happen again, and neither does any other customer.
It may be too late now, but I would have negotiated for more compensation. I have always found that when the bank is in error, they can be bargained up.
I would really want to know what they are doing to track down the culprit, what they are doing to prevent further instances, and whether the police are involved. If not, why not? Fraud is a crime.
Don't assume this is a commonplace occurrence and therefore somehow not worth pursuing.
But it's up to you if you want to pursue it further or not. You may not get any satisfactory answers, but I would ask them, 'Why should I or any of my friends continue to do business with you?".
12:01 am
October 4, 2018
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Loonie said
You ask what you're supposed to do in regards to Simplii. My answer would be, "negotiate".As savemore pointed out, compensation of 250 is a tacit admission that Simplii failed you. A manager has suggested the problem could have been one of their employees! This is not small stuff. It's a serious issue, a criminal issue.
You have no assurance or confidence that it won't happen again, and neither does any other customer.
It may be too late now, but I would have negotiated for more compensation. I have always found that when the bank is in error, they can be bargained up.
I would really want to know what they are doing to track down the culprit, what they are doing to prevent further instances, and whether the police are involved. If not, why not? Fraud is a crime.
Don't assume this is a commonplace occurrence and therefore somehow not worth pursuing.But it's up to you if you want to pursue it further or not. You may not get any satisfactory answers, but I would ask them, 'Why should I or any of my friends continue to do business with you?".
I didn't even think of making an attempt to negotiate at the time. I think it's too late now anyways. I was sort of caught off guard with the call as this happened in February and since then I have closed that Chequing Account and opened a new one.
I know it's a serious crime and those were my exact thoughts at the time that this happened in February. I remember even bringing that up to the CSR that I spoke with from Simplii. The fact is though Canada's laws aren't strict and are way too laid back which is why criminals out there will take this shots even employee's that work for a bank or FI. It won't happen again since I won't be depositing there again.
I will follow up with those questions just to see what kind of answers I get. I can tell you now, I won't get any satisfactory answer and I'd bet that nothing was pursued criminally.
"Why should I or any of my friends continue to do business with you?" Great question. I am going to follow up next week or fairly soon with those questions and this question will be at the top of the list along with have the Police become involved and if they aren't investigating, why not.
7:40 am
November 5, 2022
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Thanks so much for posting all of this info, its very enlightnening.
For sure Simplii wants to keep this level of SERIOUS FINANCIAL CRIME that is occuring quiet. They would fear it would make customers not trust them.
I think its disgusting that Simplii did not bother to report an attempt to steal 17K to the police, as if they did the victim would be contacted.
It was in the news that banks are making some people sign gag-contracts to get compensation.
It makes sense for the bank, just like Dollarama accepts a certain amount of stealing in their business model.
But with a bank, we are the ones who can get ROBBED.
All of this is no different to having a gun in your face, or a home invasion etc. The online world of course is overflowing with criminals trying to steal everyone's money.
And sometimes it can be an employee who gets the job to carry out those crimes.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-td-bank-employee-money-laundering/
Theft over $5,000
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-334.html
Punishment for theft
334 Except where otherwise provided by law, every one who commits theft
(a) if the property stolen is a testamentary instrument or the value of what is stolen is more than $5,000, is guilty of
(i) an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than 10 years, or
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