Former state Rep. Mike Jaskwhich fears illegal activity has occurred on his Wells Fargo bank accounts, two weeks after the bank said an information security breach caused an undisclosed number of customers in South Carolina and Florida to receive portions of other customers' bank statements.
Wells Fargo said there’s been no compromising or hacking of the bank’s systems. If there is any fraudulent activity resulting from the statement error, the bank said it would reimburse customers.
Jaskwhich said he and his family — with several Wells Fargo accounts — have received unsolicited credit and online payment services cards. Internet transactions totaling more than $1,000 were charged on several of the cards, even though the cards hadn’t been activated, Jaskwhich said.
He said he recently was shocked to receive what looked like a statement from a national retailer and see charges on two company credit cards even though he didn’t have an account with the retailer.
Jaskwhich said he suspects someone hacked into the bank’s system.
The Internet transactions charged on cards issued to his family all occurred on or about the date Wells Fargo’s flawed statements began appearing last month, Jaskwhich said. The transactions, all electronic, were in relatively small amounts of $300 to $400, he said.
Wells Fargo spokesman Josh Dunn denied that any hacking of the bank’s systems had occurred. He also said he was unaware of any online issues resulting from the statement errors.
“The problem is way beyond credibility, way beyond customers,” said Jaskwhich, a retired chief executive of a Greenville producer of industrial chemicals. “It’s into the whole issue of banks and security.”
Wells Fargo won’t disclose the number of customers in South Carolina and Florida whose statements were affected by the mailing errors. Bank officials have been treating the circumstances as “an information-security breach” and said they are providing affected customers with one year of free identification-theft protection.
The bank said it will reimburse customers for any fraudulent activity resulting from the statement issue.
“It’s our fault, but we’ve been able to trace it to one printer, and that printer’s off-line,” said Dunn. “We’re still working on making sure that we understand exactly how that printer malfunctioned and why those statements were sent in error to our customers.”
A spokesman for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which insures bank deposits, referred questions to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency because Wells Fargo is a national bank and the OCC is its regulator.
An OCC spokesman said the agency does not comment on specific banks.
Wells Fargo said last month a small number of customers in South Carolina and Florida received portions of other customers' mailed bank statements as the result of a printer error. Bank officials initially said online banking operations weren't involved and the error wasn't related in South Carolina to the recent conversion of Wachovia accounts to Wells Fargo's data systems.
Jaskwhich said at one point Wells Fargo’s online customer service notified him that a company he was unfamiliar with received $100 from his bill-payment service account, even though he didn’t have such an account. He also got calls from vendors asking if he authorized certain purchases apparently drawn on that account, Jaskwhich said.
All of the transactions occurred as Wells Fargo took over his accounts, he said.
At Wells Fargo, officials have said they “deeply regret” the statement errors. They also said there was little risk of a customer’s account being compromised.
John George, a retired Simpsonville information technology professional, said the Wells Fargo statement he received in the mail included a page showing transactions for another bank customer.
“Oddly, that was the page that I was missing from my statement, from my personal information,” George said.
As promised, he received a corrected statement from bank officials who told him no one else received his transaction page because it never was printed, George said.
“Their logic was they knew when the problem started,” he said, “and they knew when they stopped it.”
Jaskwhich said he learned of the bank mix-up when a woman called him and said she received one of his Wells Fargo account statements.
He checked his mail and found a statement with another woman’s name, Jaskwhich said.
He, too, has received a corrected account statement from bank officials, Jaskwhich said.
He said ongoing telephone and in-person conversations with Wells Fargo employees haven’t been able to restore access to his accounts online or use of his ATM card.
He was referred to fraud officials, who are investigating, Jaskwhich said. Bank officials have assured his online bill payments, for water, sewer and other services, will clear, Jaskwhich said.
“Obviously, thousands and thousands (of people) got misstatements,” he said. “How many people are affected beyond that?”
“A majority of people don’t look at their statements in detail,” he said. “So a $100 withdrawal to what looked like a legitimate company might just be ignored.”
One of his daughters received a letter from the company that issues store credit cards stating “there had been some strange activity in her account” and the account was being suspended pending an investigation, Jaskwhich said.
“And she said, ‘I don’t have an account,’” Jaskwhich said.
Typically, paper statements don’t include Social Security numbers or other information needed to access a customer’s account, Dunn said.
If paychecks are directly deposited by an employer and the payment is posted with a Social Security number attached, that number can show up on a paper statement, Dunn said.
“We’re confident that the statements are designed to not include Social Security numbers, although we have seen that some Social Security numbers do appear on statements,” Dunn said. “Any customers that are impacted, or if there is some sort of a breach and there is fraud that takes place on their account, they will be fully reimbursed.”
Dunn said if customers received a complete and accurate paper statement in the mail, “then we’re confident that no one else received their statement.”
Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy with the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a San Diego-based nonprofit consumer organization, said the matter should be treated as a security breach and it’s difficult for consumers to know how to react.
“Typically, when there’s a breach, you know the nature of the information that’s been breached,” Stephens said, such as a Social Security number, telephone number or email address.
In this case, he said, customers, when they receive corrected bank statements, need to “thoroughly examine” information in the statements and assess the potential consequences “if that information were seen by someone else.”
A Social Security number is “the primary mechanism for committing identity theft,” Stephens said.
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