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Comment by jcassee | Hacker News Reader

See for example this story about Jeremy Clarkson.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7174760.stm

He published his bank account details (and how to find his address) and dared people to withdraw funds from it. Which people did.

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The Direct Debit is 100% reversible. Clarkson didn't reverse it because the people who did it chose a charity and he can afford the money. If you found the money was somehow going to an actual crook you'd reverse it.

A utility company Direct Debited money from me when they screwed up and billed me for someone else's supply. I called my bank, said I wanted the Direct Debit cancelled and the money returned, they did it and the money was back in my account the same day.

The utility company sent me all manner of outraged paperwork, including threatening to set lawyers on me, but they couldn't magically take my money, and sure enough once they understood their mistake I got an apology and they wrote off all my actual bills for the past 12 months.

It changed last year in my country, we no longer have direct debit, it is now called e-invoice. You sign up for it and start getting invoices in your bank account then it is just one click to pay or you can enable auto-pay, so its essentially direct debit which you can enable/disable at any time.

But when I did have direct debit it always included the maximum pay amount which I usually set 2x the amount of average bill so if utility company makes a mistake payment will not go through.

To be fair, people didn't withdraw funds, someone was able to set up a recurring transfer (direct debit) from his account to a charity. Which makes it useless for theft, since the thief would leave definite proof of their identity (receiving account number).

The best part, I think, is Clarkson's response:

Clarkson now says of the case: "Contrary to what I said at the time, we must go after the idiots who lost the [personal information] and stick cocktail sticks in their eyes until they beg for mercy."

Bank fraud frequently requires the crook to supply an account number to transfer the funds to. This is not a problem if the only activity on the account is:

1. Opened with a fake identity

2. Stolen funds received

3. Stolen funds transferred to a bank with (intentionally) poor record keeping, potentially bouncing around a few more times.

Wire transfers seem to be a big hole at the moment.

That's in the UK, which has a common law system like the US.

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