A small consulting company sent a team to South America for a client's project. One of the team members used his business debit card at an ATM there. After a month of the team returning to the US, the small company received an overdraft notification from its bank. They could identify fraudulent withdrawals in the amount of $13,000, all from South America. There was also a $1,000 overdraft fee.

 

The criminals had installed an ATM skimmer device so that they could record the account credentials of the cards used in the ATM. Then, the criminals used false debit cards at ATMs in South America.

 

When the company realized that they had been defrauded, they asked their bank to close the impacted account immediately, but the company's attempts to make the bank pursue reimbursement for their losses were unsuccessful as the account used at the ATM had different protection procedures from consumer accounts. The bank continued deducting the $1,000 fee from the company’s owner’s personal account.