<p>D and her friend have been in Spain for almost three weeks now (coming back tomorrow). Thank god everything has been rather smooth until yesterday.</p>
<p>I got call from bank to verify and I told them my D is in Spain and she is using the card. Bank person told me there was an attempt to withdraw $120 from an ATM. I then told DW to go over bank branch to pay for it now to avoid any interest. When she got there, the bank person told her there was actually a near $9000 withdraw made. Now we started to panic. DD did not call the day before and I called her friend’s dad and he said “no calls”. </p>
<p>We were scared to death, thinking someone must have our DD and forced her to withdraw all these money. For two hours, we were thinking how to call US consulate in Spain and how to find our DD.</p>
<p>Then she called and we all felt so release. Thank God she is coming home tomorrow!!!</p>
<p>Question about this $9000 withdraw. DD said she still has the card and she kept all the receipts. She said she went to an ATM trying to get $120 but the machine denied her request. She then ran a balance check and left. She got cash from another ATM with another card.</p>
<p>I have heard there are fake ATM set up by bad guys to get password/etc. Could this be the case? How could any ATM gave out $9000 in one transaction? Are we liable for this type of fraud? </p>
<p>The bank person told DW that the transaction is still listed as pending but she is quite certain the money is gone. Any one familair with ATM technology here? If DD conducted a balance check, will that showed up as a pending transaction?</p>
<p>I don’t know anything about the ATM system, but thank god your daughter is safe–must have gotten that passport in time! I hope someone else can help with your question.</p>
<p>Thank you^^^. I am sure most of parents would understood my worry at the time. We just felt so helpless and we could not eat nor any other things except calling other people to seek advice. Then DD called and we all like, almost felt to the floor with happiness.</p>
<p>What a relief! Now about the ATM: did your DD draw out the $120? The pending $9000 sounds to me like the bank wants to verify that your DD did actually do the withdrawing and that there is money enough to withdraw–and there isn’t from what your wrote.
You and she need to let the bank know immediately that she did not withdraw the $9k and that she is being the victim of ID theft. I do not believe she will suffer any consequence from this theft. But you may want to close down this account and open a different one since there is an ID thief still at large who may try again. If you keep the account and put money in it, s/he may strike lucky.
Maybe Latetoschool who has more knowledge of these issues will see this thread and comment.</p>
<p>we closed the account right there yesterday afternoon. DD said she did not get the money.</p>
<p>O.K. We called the help desk of the creditcard this morning. The “consultant” was 100% sure the money is gone. However the fraud and security department guy said no actual withdraw was made. He said DD entered a wrong pin so she was denied the withdraw. Then I asked if she used a wrong PIN, how could she see the balance? Hmmmm. Don’t know who to believe.</p>
<p>Anyway, DD will be home tomorrow and we will deal with bank issue late.</p>
<p>If the “consultant” is correct, you lost $120. Not too bad. But it might be a good idea to press the bank into returning the money if your D did not make the withdrawal. Also discuss the security issue with the bank. Something does not sound quite right, but consultants are often low level employees without a huge amount of knowledge or authority.</p>
<p>^^^ The “consultant” and the local branch “representative” said all $9000 is gone. If it were only $120, we would not have worried. It was that $9000 and we knew DD would not do that much. That is why we were thinking something bad may happen to our DD.</p>
<p>Laserbrother if you are unable to resolve this, if you want to send to me a PM with more detail, including the name of the financial institution, I will see if I can offer some recommendations. There are shell banks and fake banks as well as fake ATMs, and, the fake banks use names that are almost identical to legitimate financial institutions. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.419legal.org%5B/url%5D”>www.419legal.org</a> is a site that was started by the South African police, but is now under different management - it has the most current, comprehensive list of fake banks I know of; you might want to check to see if the bank in question has an alert of a fake or shell bank in the region where your daughter is visiting.</p>
<p>I apologize if I misunderstand this – but the card is under your name, correct? Hence the phone call from the bank? They did not call about the $9000 but about the $120? It’s possible that there is an error in the system. It is also possible that the theft, if it is not a bank error, occurred not in Spain or any physical bank, but online, and the thief was able to not only transfer $9000 from the account but also change the PIN.</p>
<p>Sometimes these things are hard to unravel, but the key thing is your daughter is safe.</p>
<p>It may simply be a glitch in the system in converting $ to Euros, since $120 is almost 90.00 Euros but somehow the bank or card company has made it almost $9000. If they thought your D was trying to take $9000 they would have automatically frozen the account, since it isn’t possible to take that much from an ATM and it would be an usual transaction anyway.</p>
<p>If it is that your details have been stolen, don’t you have automatic insurance for at least some of it, since it is a credit card?</p>
<p>I’m glad your daughter is OK, and good luck sorting it out!</p>
<p>how do you withdraw 9000 unless you go into a branch to get the cash, so someone gave that cash to someone</p>
<p>if something was charged, you can track the charges and the vendors are responsible</p>
<p>I know of no ATM that would give more than 500 on any one day</p>
<p>Call the bank, as for fraud, get a break down of where the 9000 went, they know, this, well its just gone is hogwash, someone authorized that amount of money to be charged and the bank knows who that was</p>
<p>Get on this NOW, the longer you wait, the more excuses they will make</p>
<p>Your bank let your money get taken, it is their job to get it back and reimburse you sooner than later</p>
<p>Just a side note in terms of future travel – if your daughter travels abroad again, make sure she has an internationally-equipped cell phone with GSM service. My d. traveled widely in high school – to Russia, to China – but with a cell phone in hand and I was always able to reach her by text message (fast + cheap), or through a voice call (fast+ not-cheap, at least $2/minute – but good for emergencies, & ok if the call was kept short). I’m just mentioning this because there is no need to be in a situation where you can’t reach your d.</p>
<p>As to the money thing, I agree that the whole thing sounds fishy. If its a credit card, you shouldn’t be liable for more than $50 on a fraudulent transaction. If it is an ATM/debit – then obviously no one can draw out more than what is in the account – I am assuming that you wouldn’t give your daughter a debit card while traveling that is connected to an account with more than $9000 in it. Even so, fraud is fraud – you should be able to recover the money from the bank.</p>
<p>If in fact there was a lot of money in an account connected to the card… in the future you would want to set up a separate account. When my d. was living in Russia, I set up a joint account that I could monitor online – I would put no more than $400 in it, and then if the balance fell below $100 I’d refresh it – so in general it had a balance between $100-$200 – always enough so my d. would have ready cash if she needed it, never enough to present a huge risk in the event of theft. I did hear stories of fake ATM’s that steal PIN’s & account numbers… it does kind of sound like something like that may have happened to your daughter. </p>
<p>In any case, the important thing is that she is safe & well – I’m sure that you will be able to resolve the monetary issues with the bank after she gets back.</p>
<p>At my bank here, I’m only allowed $500 max per day, so I don’t know how you could withdraw $9000K. Furthermore, if you need to withdraw more than $5000, you must call to let them know ahead. They don’t usually have that kind of cash around.
I once used a credit card in Europe and somehow the machine swallowed the credit card because I did something wrong. They have some kind of fraud protection.
I’ve always used traveler’s check and credit card to avoid this kind of problem.</p>
<p>Just want to give those who care an update.</p>
<p>After a long flight delay, DD finally got gome by 11:45PM last night. </p>
<p>As to the $9000 with draw, we all think that bank branch “representative” and help desk “consultant” made mistake per “cash withdraw”. When DW request a card with DD’s name, she made specifically clear that there will be no cash withdraw from this card. We gave DD another debit card which offers free withdraw plus fee reimbusment from other bank’s ATM. However, this card could be used on Plus system only.</p>
<p>Long story short, DD made an balance inquary and the bank people told DW as a “withdraw”. We are going to let them know about it today.</p>
<p>BTW, DD told many stories where Spain travel industries people cheated and abused these two experiencless 17 years old American travelers.</p>
<p>I am sorry to hear that your daughter had problems in Spain. My kids went to Spain at ages 16 1/2 and 18 1/2 (separate trips, not together) and they both had wonderful experiences.</p>