Bank Security?

[Lizzie15]

We spent New Years Eve in our local Gendarmerie as someone had taken 13000€ out of our CA account ( we are now overdrawn).Apparently someone rang up claiming to be my husband asking for this money to be transferred to a Spanish bank account- a thing we have never done! We have no connections with Spain.The bank asked for a fax to confirm the request which was subsequently sent -supposedly from our home in England (the number they used was not obtainable) and signed by me,not my husband. The money was duly transferred.We now have no money in our account,indeed it is in the red quite severely.2 subsequent attempts have been made to take more money out of our account.How can this money be transferred with no proper checks? No RIB was asked for? Is this normal for French banks?

[Baz]

I am sorry you have had this problem. My experience of French Banks is that when wanting to transfer money remotely, that they will not except faxes or emails and will often telephone you even in the UK to confirm. The strange thing about your situation is why did they not check your signature on the Fax and does your account requires you husband signature?

Hopefully they can trace the payment to Spain, however in the meantime I would insist they immediately credit your account as they did not have an authorised signatory to allow this transfer. Also make sure they do not make any charges and do not stop any mandate payments. Whilst, this is not the way to start 2005, I hope they resolve the matter quickly.

Baz

[Teamedup]

As french banking laws are not the same as in the UK, I'm not quite sure how easy it will be to get the CA to accept any responsibilty initially at least for this.

What I would suggest is that you check that they are not charging you interest on this overdraft, which in itself could mount up to quite a large sum. And they are not doing all the other things that banks do here when someone becomes seriously overdrawn, like reporting you to the Banque de France.

[Lizzie15]

The account is a joint account but the "supposed" fax was signed off,in print, with my husband's signature but in fact the actual "handwritten" signature was mine. When I saw a copy of the fax several days later( it cleverly occurred just before Christmas when the banks were about to close for the holiday) I was surprised to see that the signature looks like mine!!They had copied it! Where had they got it from?They did not realise that the signature was mine and not my husband's but as the account is a joint one I don't know if it really matters? No-the money has not been transferred back by the bank altho the Gendarme indicated that we would get our money back straight away.The bank now say we will get it back (originally they washed their hands of all responsibility) eventually-this is a considerable sum to be without! At the moment our account has debits associated with the illegal transfer,I don't know about interest .The banks are now closed again until Tuesday.I just do not know how the money could be transferred so easily.The signature was convincing but surely this alone is no security? The only reason the 2 subsequent attempts failed was that I had written several cheques at the same time and the encashment of these actually put the account overdrawn,otherwise all 3 such transfers would have gone through. What is the point of our RIB paraphernalia if this is not used?It was simply a phone call followed by a bogus fax -the actual number they put on the fax doesn't exist as it was our old phone number with the last digit missing. No checks by CA other than the forged signature on the fax.

[Pucette<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Pucette<FONT><P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt">"Qui ne connaît pas la campagne lhiver, ne connaît pas la campagne et ne connaît pas]

RIBs are there to make transfers easier and many people such as the EDF require one in order to debit your account but you yourself shouldn't need one to debit your own account.

I used to debit my UK account to send money to France in the same way... the signature should suffice, in the UK banks didn't check the signatures for amounts under £9000 but would be responsible for the failure to do so. I have no reason to think that things have changed significantly.

Forging your signature is presumably a serious criminal offence both sides of the channel as is the theft of the money. I think that legally you are in the same position as if someone had stolen your chequebook and used it.

 

[Lizzie15]

Thanks for that.When we want to transfer funds from UK to France our UK banks' security is much tighter-they return the initial phone call and always ask some security questions first such as name of favourite pet etc.If the French bank had returned the initial phone call the number would have been unobtainable,even if it hadn't surely they need to make a few basic checks?

[Teamedup]

Today isn't a bank holiday here in France, so if you branch is usually open on a Monday, it will be open today.