Banking mistake puts financial info into wrong hands

SANTEE (CBS8) -   A local woman was shocked to learn her bank sent her account information to another customer by mistake.

Santee resident Mildred Mullet is outraged after learning that Chase Bank sent her personal information and account number to a complete stranger.  Mullet told News 8, "She knew my address, knew my phone number, she knew my name. I mean, that is scary."  

Part of Mildred's statement ended up in an envelope addressed to Gina Mershon, who lives clear across the country in suburban Chicago. Gina said, "I could have gone on eBay and had a spending spree."

When Gina opened the envelope from Chase, she found a letter about a charge dispute on her own account, and what appeared to be full credit or debit card account numbers for at least three other Chase customers. Gina said, "The rest of the eleven pages were other customers' information, details and all."

Mildred said, "She could've gone online and done anything she wanted to. If I had $5,000 dollars in the bank, she could've used all $5,000." Mildred is grateful Gina didn't clean her out, saying, "I'm glad she's honest, but who else has it? How many more has it, you know? And are they as honest as she?"

In a statement, Chase Bank said, "We made an error and we are correcting it," adding, "We will contact the affected customers, alert them to the issue, apologize and provide free credit monitoring for a year."

The response from Chase came two days after Gina first called to report the incident, but credit expert William Kresse says, "Time is definitely of the essence in a case like this, because the fraudsters don't need any time at all to get online and start doing dirty work with your account numbers."

Mildred says, despite the statement Chase made to the news, she has not been contacted by the bank. In fact, she says when she called Chase to get answers Tuesday, nothing had been noted in her account, and the representative denied that the bank could even make such a mistake.