Walk-All-Ova-Ya

"Walk-All-Ova-Ya" is what a friend of mine used to call Wachovia. Always thought that was kinda funny and it stuck in my mind. Anyway, seems they've had some serious security problems lately.

My wife got a call from their security department and somebody managed to withdraw $800 from her account from an ATM. We both had our ATM cards, so nobody stole them from us. Which means, not only did somebody have to figure out the PIN number, they also somehow had to have a duplicate ATM card. Hackers? Inside job? Who knows?

One of the reps my wife spoke with said they were investigating several similar incidents. Fortunately, they had put the money back into my wife's account within 24 hours. It was also nice that their own security department caught it the same day the incident happened, instead of us finding out about it days or weeks after the fact.

Interestingly, a co-worker who just returned from a 3-week vacation shared her own unpleasant Wachovia experience. I'm not sure if it's related or not, but its quite a coincidence. While they were out of town, an unknown perpetrator called the bank, gave them her husband's social security number, and fed them a story that they had just moved to New York and wanted a replacement ATM card overnighted to them. The bank not only processed the request, but sent them a PIN # as well. They managed to make several withdrawals, totalling up to about $2500. Scary!

The withdrawals on our account occurred locally, so I don't know if they used the same scheme or not (the bank didn't mention anything like that scenario to us). My co-worker was told that a bunch of Wachovia customer information recently leaked out. So, if you happen to have a Wachovia account, I suggest you keep a watchful eye on it!