A few weeks ago I deposited $500 cash into the ATM. I immediately wrote a check for $300 to pay off some credit card bills that I had following a recent surgery.
A few days after that, I got a "Deposit Correction Form" in the mail that stated that the drop slip was empty. At first I was confused, because I swore that I put the money in the slip.
I did search my car and my dorm room immediately, but didn't find any of the money. I was very willing to believe that I had made a mistake, however the quick actions taken by the bank led me to believe something was up.
First off, they told me that they would report me to the "proper law enforcement agencies" if I could not produce "further evidence." However they wouldn't tell me if I needed to get a statement from a friend that was with me or what, and what I did provide them (a signed statement) they didn't accept.
Next they told me that they had some "suspicious" video tape of myself around the bank. I asked them if I could see the video, and they said that they could only show me the parts of the video that had myself directly involved, they couldn't show me any of the actions that the bank employees had done with my slip. (Please note that a friend of mine tested out UBT's policies on this, and they showed him a video of every aspect involved in one of his deposits — this was NOT a security measure!)
Pretty much they gave me a week to pay them $500. This would be on top of the $500 that they lost, so I was out $1,000. For a college student, this is quite a lot of money.
Eventually the police were involved (by my urging) and they explored the video tapes that the bank released to them. What the police found was over eight minutes missing from the middle process of the deposits.
When faced with this, the bank eventually released the eight minutes of tape, which showed a high ranking bank official and another bank worker taking money directly out of the slip.
What I found amazing was that the bank official was the man that I had been working with to solve this — the head of electronic banking. This person was in charge of the ATMs, internet transactions, and security.
There was a big investigation that took place with both the local police and the FBI. What they found was over 1.8 million dollars stolen by this man and a few other workers.
They would take deposits, rework the numbers in online transactions, and then hide the evidence.
This person and two of the three people involved in this sheme are now in jail for 15-20 years. The other has been fired and probably won't work at a bank again.
I know that the whole of Union Bank is not responsible for this, however I urge people to steer clear of this Bank. More money has come up missing from accounts (not mine, I closed mine along time ago). They also charge $45.00 for an overdraft fee. This is the $25.00, plus $5.00 for overdraft protection service (whatever the hell that means), and $20.00 if the account is not brought back up to $0 within five hours of the transaction (no matter if it's business hours or not).
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