HSBC is being hit by a wave of fraudulent activity this week. A savvy customer noticed that his account had been emptied by someone in Bulgaria, and another customer was hit from California and Canada.

Keith, the first customer to notice the fraud, found that money was being taken out of an ATM in Bulgaria and that, after some difficulty accessing any information at all, his money would be credited back in 11-15 business days. No alert was sent to Keith that his credit card was being used outside the country, nor was he called to verify if that was ok.

Emily, the second customer, was informed by the HSBC Fraud Investigator whom she called that:

“their fraud department was so overwhelmed, it was ’still in the developing stage of how we’re going to handle’ it. I asked if she knew how many customers were affected and she stated ‘We don’t even know.’”

The investigator said all customers would be notified by letter, not by phone, due to the magnitude of the fraud. Unfortunately for both these customers, there was no direct way to escalate the call to the fraud investigators without several block attempts from the call center overseas.

Via the consumerist Tags: hsbc, fraud, bank fraud, atm fraud, banks