Complaint Review: Epassporte

In September of 2006, I looked at my WAMU bank statement online and noticed something odd: parentheses around my account balance. Doesn't that mean "negative" I thought? I checked it out, and indeed, I had a balance of roughly -$1000.00. I saw that, among several overdraft charges and other fees, 4 withdrawals for $500.00 each were made to my account from a company named epassporte. Obviously I did not make the charges and purposefully ran my account into the red by a grand, so I checked epassporte out. It was my worst nightmare, but probably a dream come true to indentity theives. They sell prepaid "virtual" Visa cards online. These cards can be used just like a Visa. They can be used for online purchases or to simply take cash out of an ATM. They need not be sent to the customer, transactions never require a signature or social security number and the only verification they ask for appears to be a Credit/Debit card number, an address and 3-digit validation number. Needless to say, someone gained access to this information and set up an account with epassporte in my name, unbeknownst to me.

I called Washington Mutual immediately to dispute the charges to my account and they were very accomodating. They reissued the funds, including all associated fees and overdraft penalties within a few days.

It is now mid-November 2006, and I just received a letter from WAMU stating that the merchant (epassporte) has verified that the transactions were valid. Since they were able to confirm both a physical address and verification number, they claimed that I had indeed made the transactions. For their part, WAMU had now appeared to roll over and play dead. The letter stated that I now had ten business to submit a signed letter with proof that I did not make those charges. I did my best to make my case, but I felt that I shouldn't have had to even do that. Certainly, yes, I conceivably could have made those charges myself and then tried to claim fraud and have the money reissued to my account. But I'm not that stupid because I know that eventually, purchases made with these credit cards would be traced back to me. Which is why I am shocked that neither WAMU nor epassporte seemed interested in what was done with the cards after they were purchased. If they had investigated this further, it most likely could have proven my case. But they did not, and now I am stuck trying to prove that I was a victim of identity theft. How do you do that? If someone had used my information INCORRECTLY, it wouldn't be identity theft. Of course my address and verification number matched! They were stolen from me!

So now epassporte is taking the high road and refusing to acknowledge that their system of "virtual" transactions directly caters to the identity theft market and likely keeps many of them in business. And WAMU is making me jump through hoops to prove something that I do not have the ability or resources to prove. I thought this was a textbook scenario to illustrate why banks have these protections in place in the first place. I'm supposed to be insured against this kind of thing. Now I feel as though WAMU is accusing ME of fraud and if I am unable to make a convincing arguement, I could soon find those parentheses around my account balance once again.

Nicolas
Los Angeles, California
U.S.A.