Seriously. And this is the author writing her own story. You'd think that after two years she'd have done a little reflection to realize that there are two instances of fraud here. The mule deceiving the bank into giving them the cash, and the bank deceiving the author into thinking the bank owes her $5k less. Align the incentives and all the bloviating about fraud "czars" and difficulties of prosecuting non-violent crimes just falls away.

I've got to wonder how much people's broken understanding of these situations is an extension of that same old mistaken belief that banks hold your money in their safe or something. Notice how she's continually going on about "my money". Whereas actually your bank balance is merely a debt the bank owes you, which cannot have been altered by the bank being defrauded. Any more than a cursory one or two business days to fix her account ledger is unacceptable. If after 60, 90, or however many days the bank cares to spend investigating it turns out that the account owner lied when disputing the original transaction, that would be its own fraud and can be prosecuted post-facto the same as anything else.