ADAMS COUNTY, Colo. — Bev Thompson was at her wit’s end.
Last Christmas, someone made more than $400 in ATM withdrawals from her bank account. Thompson reported it to the bank right away. Nearly a year later, she was still fighting to get her money back until Steve On Your Side got involved.
“They just keep saying no, no, no,” she said. “All this stuff was so stressful. I ended up in the hospital for 10 days. They had to put me on anti-anxiety pills ... and I'm still anxious about it.”
Thompson and her daughter had been fighting with Thompson’s bank, GO2Bank, since February, when the bank denied their fraud claim. Steve On Your Side found holes in the bank’s justification. Days after pointing those holes out, the bank contacted Thompson and refunded her money.
The fraud
Thompson noticed the fraudulent purchases in January when she was going through her statement after the Christmas holiday. The transactions were made at ATMs inside different Walgreens stores. Thompson said she only uses one ATM inside a Walgreens store in Thornton and only pulls out money a few times a month.
The four suspicious transactions happened between Dec. 23 and Dec. 31, 2023. Someone made three $100 transactions and one $120 transaction.
Problems with the bank’s investigation
Thompson assumed her card had been duplicated. She filed a report with Thornton Police, reported the fraud to her bank and waited. At first, GO2Bank’s fraud department refunded the money in question.
A month later, Thompson got a letter that said the bank had deemed the transactions legitimate. The detailed letter included a breakdown of the bank’s reasoning for the denial of fraud. GO2Bank determined the transactions must have been authorized because the ATM card Thompson uses had a chip and the bank said chip cards can’t be duplicated. The bank also deemed the locations were within the geolocation of Thompson’s address.
Thompson responded to those claims, pointing out that plenty of published reports show that chip cards can indeed be duplicated, and told the bank that their map supporting the denial was incorrect and didn’t show her address.
The bank refused to budge.
She filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and federal financial regulators.
Nothing happened.
She gathered more evidence of problems. The manager at the Walgreens store where Thompson uses the ATM told Thompson’s daughter that the ATM had been tampered with several times. Thompson provided the phone number for the bank.
That also didn’t work.
Finally, her daughter emailed 9NEWS Consumer Investigator Steve Staeger.
What we did to help
Steve On Your Side examined the original report from GO2Bank and found problems.
First, the bank claimed cards with chips could not be duplicated. While cards that have chips are more difficult for criminals to copy, thieves can pull it off through a process called shimming.
According to credit monitoring firm Experian, a shimming device can be installed on a card reader to duplicate information on a card’s microchip.
GO2Bank also provided a map that it claimed showed the distance between Thompson’s address and the ATMs where the fraudulent transactions took place, but the map was simply a screenshot of a Google map with driving directions from Denver to Lakewood.
While Thompson does have a Denver mailing address, her home is in an unincorporated part of Adams County near Interstate 25 and 84th Avenue.
Steve On Your Side contacted Thornton Police about Thompson’s police report and learned of additional calls to the Walgreens store with the ATM she uses in Thornton.
The week that Thompson’s card was used at that ATM, police responded to the Walgreens after a clerk reported two men tampering with the ATM. Body camera video obtained by Steve On Your Side shows officers holding a device the clerk found hanging from the ATM after the two men ran away.
The clerk told officers she saw the men remove something from the ATM and place this device on the ATM.
The clerk also told the officer that she had recently received a call from someone who said their bank alerted them that their card had been used at the ATM while they were sitting at home … with their card.
After learning all of this, Steve On Your Side contacted GO2Bank. Two days later, the company called Thompson and said the money would be refunded.
“As a general rule, for privacy and security reasons, we do not share specific information regarding customer accounts or circumstances, however I can confirm that account protection and fraud prevention are top priorities for us, and we work around the clock and invest heavily to identify, block and address fraudulent activity,” said Alison Lubert, spokesperson for Greendot, which owns GO2Bank, to Steve On Your Side in a statement.
What to do about fraudulent and unauthorized transactions
Thompson did everything right in this case, according to Mark Fetterhoff an advisor with AARP’s Fraud Watch.
“Banks are trying to protect your money, you're trying to protect your money in many different ways," he said. “And at the same time, I think there's been a big, kind of increased amount of fraud that banks are dealing with.”
Report the fraud quickly
Consumers must report fraudulent unauthorized transactions to their bank within 60 days, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Regulations require banks to investigate the claim within 10 business days, or up to 20 business days if the account is less than 30 days old.
If the bank can’t complete the investigation within that time, the bank must issue a temporary credit to the account while it works to determine what happened.
If a bank denies a claim, the bank is required to provide documentation to a consumer upon request.
Report the case to police
Fetterhoff said you should report fraud to your local police department. Police reports can help banks determine fraud claims and potentially speed them up.
You should also report identity theft to the Federal Trade Commission.
Document everything
“Having records of everything, every contact that you've had with the bank too, and making sure that anything that you have that can help prove your case in that situation is critically important,” Fetterhoff said.
Contact regulators
If the bank denies your claim and you believe it shouldn’t, Fetterhoff suggests reaching out to the CFPB, which helps regulate consumer protections, to file a complaint.
Keep fighting
Just because a bank says no – don’t give up if you feel you’re in the right.
“I think it's really important to stay adamant about the situation,” Fetterhoff said. “If you know you're not at fault, especially you know, continue to file disputes with the bank.”
Steve On Your Side has now helped consumers recover more than $808,000 since January 2024. If you have a consumer problem or a tip, click this link to submit it to our consumer investigative team.