Consumer complaint received 2025-12-21 00:00:00
Product: Checking or savings account — Checking account
Issue: Managing an account — Cashing a check
Company: PNC Bank N.A.
State: PA

Complaint narrative:
We were the victims of check and debit fraud. We have had someone who has been cleaning our house for over 8 years and unfortunately she stole our checkbook from our house and presumably was able to take a picture of one of our debit cards. It is unclear how or when she stole the checking book since she has been cleaning for us for so long. She also stole a stamp that was used to stamp this belongs to " first name last name '' with purple lettering. Over the summer she started writing fraudulent checks and forged one signature then signed the rest with the stamp she stole. Both our bank and the bank where these checks were deposited were PNC Bank. These were cashed using the mobile deposit functionality where no checks on information, date or signature were performed. In addition at least one of the checks was dated well over 6 months from the date it was deposited. The first fraudulent check was deposited on XX/XX/XXXX. We typically only write XXXX checks per year. We keep track of our balance regularly but unfortunately did not notice that many fraudulent checks were written and deposited over the summer. A total of XXXX checks were cashed between XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX. We get alerts about other potential fraud but received zero alerts about the clearly abnormal and alarming pattern of checks being written. We did not realize this was going on until XX/XX/XXXX and reported it immediately. We have a joint account and my wife happened to be out of the country when we found out. I went to the bank the same day to report the fraud and in discussions with the bank it was decided to put our account on high alert until my wife was able to get home to transfer all our money to a new account. During this time the same person started sending money from one of our debit cards via XXXX. At the time this happened we did not know she had our debit card information as we still had the physical card still. This was realized within XXXX hours of it happening and was reported immediately. In total the amount stolen was {$15000.00}. 

We disputed all of the checks and all of the debit card transactions right away. We were reimbursed one of the 26 checks which was only {$800.00} of the approx {$15000.00}. PNC bank has temporarily given us back the debit fraud amount but these are still listed as " pending dispute '' totaling {$1600.00}. The remaining amount was checks and we were informed a few weeks ago that PNC Bank denied all the remains check disputes arguing that we did not report it in a timely manner. This was of course all reported to the police immediately and we filed charges. This is still an active investigation. 

Personally, I believe that PNC Bank was negligent. Both our account and the fraudulent account were PNC Bank. The PNC Bank app was used to deposit the checks to the fraudulent checks. There was no validation on the checks that were mobile deposited and it was clear by anyone who looked at the check that a stamp was used to sign the checks. There was also a check that was deposited that was dated beyond 6 months. It was also negligent that the bank did not red flag these transactions. We normally use XXXX checks a year and multiple were being written for the same day let alone XXXX over the span of 2 months all to the same person. This 100 % would not have happened if these were attempted to be cashed in person and the fact that PNC Bank is not taking any ownership of this is disappointing. Even the PNC staff who I interacted with had comments of " Oh wow this is clearly fraudulent, '' " Wow you never write checks, this is clearly far from normal for you, '' " This is clearly not your signature, '' " You can see the rest of the stamp lettering on this one. '' Given all of these events we do not feel like our money is safe with PNC Bank and are in the process of moving all our money to another bank.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation