A victim of what the authorities have labelled third-party fraud is angry at Scotiabank and the police for the way in which they have dealt with his ordeal. In fact, Matthew Johnson, who said the bank has refused to return the funds taken from his account, has been exploring his legal options and has taken his business to another bank.

According to Johnson, his ordeal started in May this year when he was unable to access his account.

“It was month end and I was supposed to receive my pay, but I could not get onto my online banking. When I went to my home branch, they explained to me that $110,000 went through my account; that somebody put the money into my account and drew it out from the ATM at Michi Supercentre and from the Texaco [service station] at Mary Brown’s corner,” Johnston told the Jamaica Observer.

However, he said he had never been to those locations.

According to Johnson, the branch manager informed him that his account was locked from a Scotiabank branch in Lucea, Hanover and that the account of the individual, whose money was defrauded, was at another branch in Montego Bay, St James.

“They didn’t even explain that to me at first. It was when I went back they explained that it was a bank in Hanover that had locked the account, that it was somebody’s account in Montego Bay that was hacked. I don’t know anybody in MoBay. I have never even spent a day in MoBay, so this just odd to me,” Johnson said.

He said he went through a lengthy investigation with the Scotiabank’s Security Department, and even attempted to make a report to the Fraud Squad.

The bank investigation, he said, lasted from the end of May and concluded between August and September, when an investigator from Scotiabank informed him that he could not get back his money.

“The last time I went to the investigator, which was either late August or early September, he told me that I would not be getting back my money. He just said the bank had to recover the money, so my pay of $50,000 was taken from my account, which they said would not be touched until the investigation was over. He said they recovered part of the money,” Johnson said.

“I said to them, ‘How can you take my pay for something you haven’t even proven I’m guilty of doing?’ If they had me in handcuffs and proved that I was the one who did the transaction, then fine, but I’m still here and I still don’t understand what’s happened. I feel like they just go ’round me and take my money,” he charged.

“They labelled my account as suspected third-party fraud and I was not in handcuffs or in police custody for committing a crime. And they have not said anything to me other than this happened and they just need to recover their funds,” Johnson said.

He said he was especially puzzled when the investigator told him about an incident in which someone had loaned their card to scammers, after learning through a Facebook post that if they loaned out their card, they would get paid, but that in this case, $300,000 went through the account and the person had to pay for it.

“I didn’t understand why he was making these references because I knew I didn’t have anything to do with this,” Johnson said.

The Sunday Observer tried without success to contact the investigator. However, a representative from Scotiabank’s Corporate Security in downtown Kingston, insisted that third-party fraud, by definition, requires the complicity of the card holder.

“What we know, based on investigations, if money is fraudulently placed in an account and then taken, the only way that can happen is if the cardholder gives assistance to the process,” said the bank representative, who did not agree to being identified.

The representative also explained that scammers access defrauded money from ATMs or through point of sale transactions which, in either case, requires the cardholder’s debit card and personal information number.

Johnson said that when — on the advice of the bank — he and his father went to the Fraud Squad to report the matter, a similar insinuation was made about him being complicit with the crime.

“They asked me if I loaned anybody my card or if I gave out my card for people to use, or if I rented it out. I told them ‘no’. They said it is something that happens all the time, that people rent out their cards to other people, like them just need a bank account to deposit and draw money. And they asked me if I had done that and I said ‘no’,” Johnson related.

He said that although he spoke to a cop at Fraud Squad, they did not take his report, saying that the matter was between him and his bank.

“The detective said that I shouldn’t be reporting the crime because it is the bank that is supposed to report it, so he could not take the report,” Johnson told the Sunday Observer.

The detective at the Fraud Squad with whom Johnson spoke did not wish to be identified, but explained why Johnson’s situation, while unfortunate, could not be remedied by the Fraud Squad.

“If there is a report to be made, the bank would make that report and provide the Fraud Squad with certain evidence to support it. So you, the person who goes to the bank and the bank tells you that, you cannot report an incident like that because you are going to say to the police ‘the bank tell me say’, and that can’t work. That would be like somebody saying you stole money and they tell you to go to the police. The bank would have to say this is what happened and we call in that person and interview them,” he said.

“The bank has a right to freeze the account, so if the person has any problem, they get an attorney. But more than likely, the main thing is for persons to pay back the bank their money, because certain things don’t happen just like how they say it happen. We know certain things about third-party transfer that they won’t tell you,” the officer said.

Meanwhile, Assistant Commissioner of Police Fitz Bailey, who heads the Counter Terrorism and Organised Crime Investigation Branch, suggested, when the Sunday Observercontacted him, another means by which scammers could have used Johnson’s account and implicate him in the crime.

“People’s cards can be cloned. Persons who are involved in, let’s say scamming, they clone the cards; debit or credit card cloning, where they get the information and are able to access persons’ accounts. Most of the time, they use that to clean out the person’s account. But it’s not far-fetched for someone, once they get the account information, they can lodge money and then clean out the account,” ACP Bailey said.

Johnson also shared another difficulty he faced after the crime was committed.

“When they took my money, it was basically the roughest month of my life because I get this pay to take me through the month and I didn’t get it. I had to be borrowing money,“ he said.

“The struggles continued for two more months because I had to be repaying what I borrowed out of my pay, and trying to survive on the little that was left after paying people them money,” he added.

“Since I went to the Fraud Squad I have not heard anything back from them. I contacted a lawyer but he has not yet got back to me,” he also revealed.

“It’s just disappointing… they didn’t even think how this was affecting me. If I was a criminal I couldn’t say anything. But I know I didn’t do anything [wrong] and I’m sitting here waiting for an answer,” he said. “I am upset at the way they dealt with it. It just felt like they didn’t care, like they were just robots just doing whatever.”