A woman says someone used her ATM card to take $500 out of her account, but she had her card in her wallet the whole time.
Kristin Grey was in the emergency room, having chest pains, and wanted to make a payment upfront on her bill.
"I pulled up my account to see what I had in my account and there was a $503 charge and I was like, this is an ATM charge. I didn't do this," said Grey.
She looked in her wallet and saw the shiny gold security chip on her ATM card staring right at her ... which in her head told her one thing.
"I had it in my possession at all times. They can't steal my identity," Grey said.
She called her bank who said that card was used to take $500 out of an ATM at the Bank of the West in Grapevine.
Grey told them she didn't make the charge. Bank of America, Kristin's bank, investigated for several weeks before calling her with the decision.
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"They said, 'We decided we're not going to pay. You actually did the purchase.' And I said, 'No I didn't,'" recalled Grey.
ATMs require a PIN. Combined with a chip it's great protection. There's a problem though: not all ATMs have the chip card reader.
Some still use the magnetic strip and are still vulnerable to copies just like the old ATM cards.
Bank of the West has a chip reader now but didn't late last year when Grey's card was used.
"It was my card. My PIN, that's why they weren't going to give me my money back. They couldn't prove it wasn't me that did the transaction. I asked for tape, they said they couldn't pull the tape," Grey said.
"I said, 'I'm done. I'm done talking to y'all. The next person you'll talk to will be my attorney," she said.
Instead she called NBC 5 Responds. We had Kristin fill out a police report, giving a sworn statement to an officer that she didn't make that charge.
She then sent the information to Bank of America and we reached out. Once the bank had the police report, they processed a refund and the $500 was back in Kristin's account.
Bank of America tells us they can't comment on Kristen's account for privacy reasons but they look at each claim on a case-by-case basis and work to resolve their issues.
You should know these new chip cards have dramatically dropped the number of cases like Kristin's. Most criminals have moved away from taking your card information to an ATM because of these chip cards. But there are still some banks out there --- just a few --- still waiting to upgrade their system and criminals are still taking advantage of them.
