Sunday, February 19, 2006

Judge fines bank for not warning customers sufficiently for debit-card fraud

Financieele Dagblad reports that a judge in Amsterdam fined a large retail bank for not compensating customers who where tricked into losing their debit-card (the exchange-trick, where at the ATM someone diverts attention to quickly exchange the owner's card for another one). Before the trick, the crooks were of course sure to observe the pin-code so that they could cash-in quickly afterwards.

The arguments of the judge are not entirely clear. On the one hand it appears that it finds that the bank has not warned its customers sufficiently, on the other hand the idea was that customers should not be obliged to be suspicious at all times for the possibility of an exhcange-trick fraud.

The verdict does reflect a trend where victims of fraud take the case to the judge rather than to the customer redress committee for banks.