At 06:47 PM 11/25/2005, you wrote:
<snip>
(1) Certificates of Deposit: Certificates in my family's name were,
without authorization, put in someone else's name, and ours replaced. The
bank attributes this to a "computer error," without explanation.
<snip>
(2) Home Mortgage: Wells Fargo changed my home mortgage account, without
consent, so that I was bumped from "primary customer" to "additional
customer," and the same stranger who appeared on the CD accounts became
the "primary customer".
<snip>
(3) Home Equity Line of Credit: Wells Fargo says the same "computer error"
caused the change in ownership by replacing my spouse's name with that of
the person who appeared on the other accounts.
In the latter two cases, the bank sent mail to my home address, with the
stranger's name appearing instead of my spouse's.
Wells Fargo refuses to explain, beyond a vague "computer error," how this
situation came about and I would appreciate some expert take on this:
Is it possible for a single "computer error" to cause the changes in
multiple accounts? If so, how would such changes occur? How could we trace
them?
Could the errors have occurred by random malfunction? Would an individual
have had to make multiple entries to effect those changes?
Can a bank's computer malfunction on its own, select three of my accounts
at random, and then transfer ownership this way? Or must the server be
programmed to do this?
Do these snafus seem innocent, or do you think something sinister could be
involved?
Is there a way to determine if Wells Fargo's server has been hacked into,
and, if so, to trace who and where the hacker is?
What employee(s) in the bank would have information about how the changes
occurred?
Do you know, or have you heard, of similar activities affecting other
Wells Fargo accounts?
<snip>
Sincerely,
Sam Muhawi
I have programmed banking systems for over 20 years but I have no
experience with Wells Fargo and I do not know what system(s) they
run. However, judging from what you described it sounds to me like they
either had a major Customer Information System install or upgrade. It is
possible that all of their application masters are linked to CIS for such
things as names, addresses and other demographic information and your CIS
entry was somehow corrupted. Again, not knowing the specifics of their
systems, this is just a guess. It could have been a DB2 error, if their
CIS or other masters are DB2. It could have been a conversion programming
error in logic if such a thing were involved.
The bottom line is, the customer service people probably don't know what
the error was other than it was a computer error. Only the technicians
investigating and, hopefully, correcting the problem would know the specifics.
Steve Wiegand
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