No one wants to be a Barney Fife

DAVID SILVA

I came home from work a few weeks ago to find my roommate sitting at

her desk, fuming.

“Someone,” she said bitterly, “just cleaned out my checking

account.”

Elizabeth said she had tried to buy something with her check card

earlier that day only to have the card returned to her as rejected.

After spending the next three hours making increasingly frantic phone

calls and visiting her bank branch, she was able to determine that

someone had a) gotten ahold of her personal identification number; b)

deposited a counterfeit check for $980 into her account through an

ATM machine; and c) withdrawn more than $1,000 from that account over

a four-day period.

The bank official who talked to Elizabeth told her she was the

fifth customer to come into the branch that day with the very same

complaint, and they were starting to suspect something was amiss.

Elizabeth’s account was credited the sum of the stolen money, but she

was far from mollified.

“This is inexcusable,” she said. “If my bank can’t protect my

money from any lowlife who comes along, I’m changing banks.”

I told her that while I understood her feelings on the matter, I

doubted switching banks would make her any less vulnerable to ATM

fraud.

“This probably has nothing to do with your bank being careless,” I

said. “The problem is that no matter how many crack security measures

the banks put in place, it’s never enough, because this is the work

of organized crime. We like to think only unsophisticated lowlifes

commit these types of acts. But what we’re really dealing with are

well-financed, professional criminals who have made ATM fraud their

bread and butter.”

That’s what I believed then. But a couple of things have happened

since that have caused me to reconsider my mob theory. Now I’m

thinking that maybe ATM fraud is really the work of a gang of

troubled fourth-graders who have discovered it’s easier to rip off

ATMs than other kids’ milk money.

My change in thinking began when Elizabeth’s bank mailed the

counterfeit check to her. Don’t ask me why, but I had assumed the

check must have been some masterpiece of forgery to get past the

bank’s crack security measures. I envisioned confidence- inspiring

watermarks and clean lines on paper of the perfect bond and texture.

I envisioned well-financed professionalism.

Instead, what my roommate received looked like it had been

scribbled on the back of a cereal box. The only watermark on it came

from what I assume was the bottom of a coffee cup. It bore the

address of a bank in a certain California city, except the name of

the city was misspelled. But worst of all was the endorsement

signature on the back of the check -- a signature that bore no

earthly resemblance to my roommate’s signature but was in the exact

same handwriting as the signature on the front.

A nearsighted mental patient flying past that piece of paper at 90

mph in the back of an ambulance could have spotted it as a work of

fiction. But somehow it had managed to buffalo every bank employee

who handled it, right up to the time it was returned to them “address

unknown.”

A few days later, I was about to leave the apartment for work when

I got a call from a representative of my own bank. It seemed that I

had used my check card at a store under investigation for ATM fraud.

Not to worry, the representative told me. My account was intact, and

as a precaution the bank was canceling my cards and issuing me new

ones in the mail. I felt a flash of anger, but realized my bank was

only trying to protect itself and my money. I thanked the

representative, and asked for the name of the store under

investigation so I’d know not to shop there again.

“Oh, I’m sorry, but we can’t give out that information,” the

representative said.

I repeated my request three more times until I realized the voice

on the phone was serious. Confidentiality laws protected the identity

of the business suspected of ripping off its customers. So now every

place I’d used my cards in the past month was under a dark cloud of

suspicion, and this was in the middle of the Christmas shopping

season. The list of suspects is long, and if you’re the owner of one

of the shops I’ve recently patronized, I’ve got my eye on you.

The woman on the phone suggested I visit my bank branch to get a

temporary ATM card. So that morning, I stopped by the bank, and was

directed to the woman who handled such requests. I explained to her

what had happened, she asked me for some information about my

account, and in less than five minutes she handed me a temporary ATM

card. Then she told me she was happy to be of service and turned

away. I now had at my disposal a brand-new card capable of

withdrawing hundreds of dollars a day from my checking account, along

with a brand-new PIN of my choosing.

All without having once been asked for my ID.

Clearly, I had stumbled onto a weakness in my bank’s crack

security measures.

The woman noticed the expression on my face, and asked if there

was some problem. When I answered that she had never asked to see

some proof of identification, she seemed puzzled by my concern.

“Well, you gave me your information, so I pulled up your account,”

she explained. “It confirmed for me that your cards had been

canceled.”

“But ... but ... I could have had those cards canceled,” I said,

dismayed. “I could be anybody, but you wouldn’t know it because you

haven’t checked.”

“Why would you want to cancel your own cards?” she asked.

I blinked. It was clear that I was wasting my time, so I simply

put the temporary card in my wallet and left.

Identity theft is the bane of the Information Age, disrupting

countless lives and costing financial institutions billions every

year. You would think banks might find this troubling. But

apparently, my bank and my roommate’s bank aren’t living in the

Information Age. They’re living in some happier place where nobody

locks their doors and asking for papers is considered the height of

rudeness. Nobody wants to be a Barney Fife in Mayberry.

Instead, our banks use the honor code system of ATM security. Just

give us your name! We trust you! The system works very well unless

you’re dealing with someone without honor. Like a criminal.

I told my nephew, who works at a bank, about what had taken place.

He shook his head like he wasn’t surprised. Then he told me most

banks allow customers to request that every in-person transaction on

their accounts require a check for ID. All I had to do was request

it, he said.

It seemed astonishing to me that I would have to make a special

request for something like that. I would have thought it a given.

Having to ask my bank to check for ID seemed as strange as having to

ask a boat builder to make sure the boat was watertight. But there it

was.

So the next day, I called my bank and made the request. From now

on, anyone trying to make a move on my account will have to first

prove that he or she is me. That’ll show those fourth-graders.

* DAVID SILVA is a Times Community News editor. Reach him at (909)

484-7019 or by e-mail at david.silva@ latimes.com.