If someone has just your bank routing and account number, can they steal money from you? If so, how do they do it? What are the security measures in place to prevent it?
I would hope not since most (if not all) personal checks contain both pieces of information on them.
That’s all you need to order checks from certain third party vendors. If you could get a fake ID, you could pass them.
Yes. It happened to me a few years ago. I don’t know if any security procedures have been added since then, but there sure didn’t seem to be any at the time.
What seems to have happened is that someone stole outgoing mail from our mailbox, and got checking account and credit card numbers that way. Then they used that information to set up electronic payments for stuff they wanted, leaving us with the charges. We had to change all our account numbers and transfer the balance over, but we did in the end get refunded for the fradulent charges. We also started sending mail only through actual Post Office drop points to prevent theft that way, but now we’ve moved to a different apartment that has its own drop point.
Are these type check vendors required to verify the info they receive? If not, why do banks accept them? You wouldn’t even need to get the fake ID if you are paying by check through the mail.
I pay my state taxes online and all they require is a routing/transit number and the account number. However, they know whose taxes you are paying, so it’s not like you are going to run away with merchandise.
I think they may require a voided check for your first order. But all you’d have to do is steal a check.
All this is rather shocking in this day and age.
Right, another reason to do away with checks altogether.
It seems like the perpetrator here had access to a lot more than your check routing and account numbers .
Oh, bull! And replace them with what?
At least with paper checks, I can point to the bottom and say ‘that signature is not mine’ and easily show they are fraudulent. It’s a lot harder for EFT, Paypal, online or phone credit cards, etc.
I’ve been paying bills by check for over 40 years now, and never had a fraud case. I’ve used credit cards for far fewer years, but have had 2 cases where somebody many states away was charging things to my credit card. And it took a lot of effort to get those charges reversed.
Additionally, they mail the new checks to the address on the old check. The weakness is in the security of the mailbox. So you would need to steal a blank check, then commit the federal crime of stealing the new checks from the mailbox. In a practical sense, many people’s mailboxes are not secure, though.
Not only is it possible, it’s extremely easy via EFT. I won’t elaborate on how to do so, but at my work I have seen it happen many times.
That seems to have been what happened to me. The bank pretty much said that it was the most likely explanation.
I assume this is what happened with my checking account last year. Someone started passing checks with my account and routing numbers, but entirely different names, addresses, phone numbers, signatures, and check designs. They passed about a dozen checks worth several hundred dollars. Since I rarely pay anything but rent and utilities with checks and I’ve never been told my payment wasn’t received, I suspect a bank statement (containing cancelled checks) was stolen out of my mailbox.
Thieves suck and should burn in hell, etc., but I am most upset with my bank for not having sirens going off and red flags waving when those obviously different checks appeared. Apparently, the discrepancies raised no alarms, and if they did, no one checked into it or deeply enough. It’s the primary reason I’m leaving that bank. (I live in a better, more secure apartment now, too.)
As a poster:
Factual answer: Under some circumstances, yes, that’s enough information for some people to get money from your account.
As a moderator:
Let’s keep the discussion about whether it’s possible and refrain from discussing methodology.
Gfactor, General Questions Moderator
I don’t believe this is a good reason to leave a bank, not at all. Checks are machine read and processed, so there isn’t anything to be gleaned by green, sparkly checks one day and something completely different the next. This is the same reason post-dating checks doesn’t work nor mean anything legally. To further add insult to injury, modern banking regulations just enacted by congress makes a written check, theoretically at least, payable on the spot or very nearly so.
As a manager of mine (an EVP of a Credit Union) said to me long ago when I would come up with various ways that people could steal from the CU: “Never embezzle with a check. It passes through too many hands.”
I know a person who was a door to door salesman for bottled water. Part of the contract agreement for what he was selling was an authorazation for automatic withdrawl of the monthly bill. Apparently this gave him the routing and account numbers for hundreds of accounts. Someone stole this information from one of the business computers without being noticed and they literally printed their own checks for about a year and a half before being caught.
I’m not denying that it’s possible, but I can testify that it’s so unlikely as not to deter companies in continental Europe from printing this information on their letterhead. I worked for three years for a German university research institute, and our bank, routing number, and account numbers were printed for all to see on the official letterhead we used for all correspondence. Similarly, whenever I received a letter from a company, government agency, or sometimes even an individual, this information would be included along with the return address and phone number.