Banking swindles

[hazel]

We're all familiar with scams that emanate from criminals - phishing emails and so on. But here in the UK we have a new problem: the banks themselves are scamming people.

Some of these scams are fairly minor. For example, banks and building societies that offer deposite bonds no longer tell you the annual interest except in the small print. The headline figure is always the overall growth over the life of the bond. This might be 6% or more. It looks generous until you divide it by the lifetime of the bond and see that it is actually pretty measly.

Then there is the account that offers a high rate of interest but you have to pay a monthly fee. When you subtract the fee from the interest to get the real rate of return, the figure is quite low.

The most perenicious swindle imho is the " simple overdraft with no hidden fees". Santander invented this but other banks are now jumping on the bandwagon. Instead of charging interest on an overdraft, the bank charges you a fixed daily fee, say £6. Of course when you turn this into an interest rate for an overdraft of £50 or so, it is astronomical, way into loanshark territory. And they have the unmitigated gall to present this as an improvement in the customer experience.

It doesn't affect me directly because I am careful not to get into debt, but it makes me very angry on behalf of their victims.

Do people know of other scams of this sort?

[cousinlucky]

The big thing over here is how the banks committed and are committing fraud in the sale of houses and other financial instruments relating to mortgages.

A number of judges in various states have stopped foreclosures because the banks do not have paperwork proving that they own the houses being foreclosed or that the proper paperwork was ever legally valid in the first place.

Some large investment firms that were swindled are suing some of the large banks and the whole house of cards could crumble at any time!!!

A new law is going into effect here that a person actually has to sign up for overdraft protection instead of it being automatically a part of your checking account.

Banks here were charging $35.00 and up if you went one penny over your balance. Big Banks like Chase, Citi, etc. are being abandoned by their depositors who are tired of being nitpicked to death by all of the schemes the banks are using to drain their customers accounts!!!

[Rubberman]

As far as I'm concerned, another name for "bank" is "legalized theft". That's why I use credit unions. Generally, the members (depositors) are the owners. They generally have better interest rates (both higher for savings and lower for overdrafts, loans, etc) than banks, and their employees know that they are there for you, and not for management.

[Roxoff]

I opened up this thread hoping I was going to find a way I could swindle some money out of my bank, to put the boot on the other foot for a change. How disappointing that it's just another warning about the dodgy practices and shady dealings of some of the world's most respected organisations...

Thanks for the heads-up, though, Hazel.

[Rubberman]

I opened up this thread hoping I was going to find a way I could swindle some money out of my bank, to put the boot on the other foot for a change. How disappointing that it's just another warning about the dodgy practices and shady dealings of some of the world's most respected organisations...

Thanks for the heads-up, though, Hazel.

Nah! Unless you are a trusted insider, swindling banks is a tough nut to crack. They assume any outsider (including customers) is trying to rip them off. The higher you reside in the bank's hierarchy, the easier it is to relieve them of their assets. Witness, CEOs of banks pretty much have carte blanc to do whatever they want with the $$ that you have entrusted to them.

[elija]

Nah! Unless you are a trusted insider, swindling banks is a tough nut to crack. They assume any outsider (including customers) is trying to rip them off. The higher you reside in the bank's hierarchy, the easier it is to relieve them of their assets. Witness, CEOs of banks pretty much have carte blanc to do whatever they want with the $$ that you have entrusted to them.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the collective noun for bankers is wunch as in "a wunch of bankers"

[cousinlucky]

Nah! Unless you are a trusted insider, swindling banks is a tough nut to crack. They assume any outsider (including customers) is trying to rip them off. The higher you reside in the bank's hierarchy, the easier it is to relieve them of their assets. Witness, CEOs of banks pretty much have carte blanc to do whatever they want with the $$ that you have entrusted to them.

A bunch of New Yorkers swindled millions from banks here by beating them at their own game. Most of them were finally caught too!!!

What they did was to falsify everything; they brought phony employment records, phony appraisals, etc. to the banks with pictures of the houses they wanted to buy. They had down payment money too; they just needed a loan from the bank to buy the house. When they got the loan money they would skip and resell the house to another bank. Lots of times they never had title to the houses and they would pay people to be straw buyers with phony names and phony ID's.

Wachovia Bank got hit the worst with these scams but for a while these crooks got very rich very quickly beating the banks at their own game. Lots of banks just sold houses to people that could not afford them so the banks could foreclose and keep reselling the houses to people that could not afford the house. They would bundle up a bunch of these deadbeat mortgages and sell them to investment houses and other financial institutions till the whole shebang fell apart!!

[roland985]

I opened up this thread hoping I was going to find a way I could swindle some money out of my bank, to put the boot on the other foot for a change. How disappointing that it's just another warning about the dodgy practices and shady dealings of some of the world's most respected organisations...

Thanks for the heads-up, though, Hazel.

World's most respected?
Bwahahahahahahaha.

Had mt first good laugh of the week...

[cousinlucky]

Tax Lien Predators!!!

The Big Wall Street Banks Have Found a New Way To Strangle the American People: Predatory Property Tax Collection

[hazel]

I heard of another one yesterday.

We all think we know the difference between credit card debt (unsecured) and a mortgage (secured on your home). In the UK, any secured loan has to be advertised with the words "Warning! Your home may be at risk if you cannot keep up payments."

But what most people don't know is that any unsecured loan can be turned into a secured one behind your back. If the bank thinks that you will not be able to repay, they can apply to the courts for a "charge" to be placed on your home. You will not be told about this until after it has happened. You can then "make representations to the court" (i.e. try to persuade them that there is some good reason in law why they should not do this). If you fail, and you still can't pay, your home can be sold over your head.

What is so iniquitous about this is that most people would not run up such debts in the first place if they were warned that they might be putting their homes at risk.