I filed a claim with my bank in April 2010, when I first discovered that two new ATM/Check Cards had been issued and used by someone other than me in January and May 2009. I was in jail (falsely charged, first-timer, 61 years old). The woman who put me in jail stole the cards upon delivery to my home mailbox. She made a handful of charges and even withdrew cash from my local bank's ATM machine. The bank ultimately flagged the cards for suspicion of fraud and canceled them. I provided the proof of incarceration that the bank requested, but two weeks later, I received notice that my claim was denied because it had been more than 120 days since the fraudulent transactions happened. I could not have discovered the fraud or acted any more expeditiously. Do I have any legal standing for a claim?
Yes, your liability for the unauthorized card transactions should have been capped at $50 regardless of the delay. If you did not in fact authorize or request the issuance of the cards, the bank cannot impose any liability on you at all for their use by someone else. You can point out to the bank that time limits in the applicable section of Regulation E (which address this question) must be extended under extenuating circumstances that prevented you from realizing you had been defrauded.
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Yes, your liability for the unauthorized card transactions should have been capped at $50 regardless of the delay. If you did not in fact authorize or request the issuance of the cards, the bank cannot impose any liability on you at all for their use by someone else. You can point out to the bank that time limits in the applicable section of Regulation E (which address this question) must be extended under extenuating circumstances that prevented you from realizing you had been defrauded.
