Green Dot Corporation Green Dot Bank, WalMart Money Card Misappropriation of Funds; Unreasonable Requests (3 weeks after IT stopped my card for "suspicious activity" --identity theft, fraud -- said need my signature scanned and emailed to them; then said to take photo of signature and email that); then refused to return money AFTER merchant agreed to return it 2+ weeks earlier, as soon as "bank" put it request.  Nationwide

Green Dot Corporation highjacked my money and won't give it back.  They've done this before.

On May 6, 2015 my payment of my phone bill could not be processed.  I was told AT&T received an unusual code as the reason, that the payment was not declined for NSF, but he did not know what the code did mean and suggested I call the bank.  The "bank" is the issuer of the WalMart Money Cards, which is what I have been using because there is no bank in my town.  So I called  Customer Svc. at 877-937-4098 and was advised that the "bank" put a stop on my card for "suspicious activity"; the old card was canceled and they said I'd receive a new card in about two weeks, and told me to look on line for the details, but first I had to call all the companies I auto-pay bills.  

When I could get online I saw four (4) unauthorized charges totaling about $93 that were made the day before while I was running errands; they were made between my purchase at a boutique and my purchase at WalMart...while I was driving.  The merchants paid were Straight Talk, American Roaming and two payment to GoogleCrowdstar, all made on May 5th.  I called Green Dot back to confirm those were not my payments and was told to call the merchants to try to get the money from them, first.  I don't know WHY they do that...unless an account was established in my name, they won't give me any information readily. I know this because of what took place last time this happened, and I'll get to the in a minute after I set forth this go-arounds chain of events.

I spent the rest of the 6th dealing with merchants and related things because I want/need to find out who keeps doing this and prove it to stop it. The first merchant was Straight Talk, $47.57 for telephone service. They would not give me the phone # my account paid for.  Since it was a fraudulent payment that I did not make, on an account I don't own, I get nothing. I explained that I need to prove who's doing this, and after about 20 minutes and 12 different approaches, I finally told her if my bank paid the bill, it MUST be "my" account, and asked if they have a service in my name. She looked, and they did.  I got a wild notion and threw out two other names, and lo and behold, Straight Talk had accounts under both of those names, too. I was onto something I'l explain shortly.  In the end, Straight Talk said they would pay the bank back the money to put back on my account as soon as the bank called them, but they cannot return the money directly.

The second merchant is American Roaming Network.  This company's a giant front for fraud; the toll free number Green Dot gave me does not exist...I'd dial it, and before even ringing, every call just got "dropped"; so I googled ARN and found another number. I called it, someone picked up the phone but said nothing. I kept saying, "Hello? Hello?", and I heard someone sniff twice, so someone did anser the phone, but they would not talk. I finally hung up, and spent the next hour researching this company, which operates in southern FLA and the Caribbean, and by the nature of what services it provides, I feel it's connected to the person with the Straight Talk accounts, but more on that later.

The third merchant has no phone number. I had to get creative. I did some investigatig and found a Facebook account open under a fake name (I'm sure it's fake: JPat James), with no picture, no info, no nothing except under "Likes>Games", and sure enough: JPat plays Google Crowdstar.  

So on May 7th I called Green Dot back to report what I learned from the merchants, told them the same woman who had set up an account in my name that we discovered in February had stolen my identity and waw at it again.  I thanked them for stopping the card because those charges were not made by me, and I asked how they knew to place the stop.  I did not get a straight answer, so I reitterated that Straight Talk would give them the money as soon as Green Dot called Straight Talk.  They said before they could answer that they had to open a dispute and research the charges, and told me to email a written dispute to transactiondispute@greendot.com that included my name, phone #, card #, and the date, name of merchant, and amount of the disputed transactions.  I did this right away because my card had been canceled before I knew it was fraudulently used and I hadn't pulled cash out of the ATM to live on before calling to cancel, so time was of the essence...I only had $40.  Why Green Dot required me to send a letter listing the transaction information on the charges the IT brought to MY attention.  And I should have been given an opportunity to pull cash out before they canceled the card.  

About May 18th I got a voicemail from Green Dot (WalMart money card) saying they still needed a transaction dispute letter, and that I should put a reference number such and such on the letter; however, the woman had a heavy either eastern or Filipino-type accent and I could not understand all the numbers. Also the message said send the letter to transactiondispute@greendotcorp.com.  Please note that's greendotCORP.com, where the first email address I was given was just @greendot.com.   So I forwarded the first letter I'd sent to this new email address.  Several days later a new urgency arose: I'd spent the $40, had no money on the new card after paying bills and buying groceries, etc., I ran out of toilet paper, and it payday was over a week away.  I needed that money back immediately!  So I called them back.

This time, they did not say whether they had or had not received the dispute letter I'd emailed; rather, they man told me that they needed it in writing. I told him it was in writing, sent two weeks earlier.  He said they needed a letter with my signature on it.  There was some disagreement about this, as nonsense, but I needed TP, so I went into the office, got paper and pen, and with him on the line I rewrote everything on paper and signed it.  As I was writing it all out, he reminded me 3 or 4 times, "remember to sign it", "okay, no sign it", "did you remember to sign it?".  I was getting upset but had done what he wanted, and asked him where I should send the letter. He said, "Good, now email it to transactiondispute@greendotcorp.com.   I asked him how the heck I was to email a piece of paper? I needed an address or fax number but he would not provide one.

Over the next half hour I grew evermore impatient as he came up with numerous ways to get my signature to him by email. "Scan the letter"...like I have a scanner at home.  I explained that I'm not a business, I don't have a scanner, and I live 50 miles from the nearest town; and there was no way I was driving a hundred miles RT to scan a letter so he could have my signature.  He then suggested I take a picture of it with my phone and email that.  I tried it, but I can't email from my phone because I have to get rid of the old email address because that was part of how my account got accessed to begin with and it's the email attached to my phone, and the stupid phone won't allow me to update it.  I was getting ready to try again when the phone beeped low battery. I'd been  on the phone with this guy for way over an hour already.  So now I was very upset.

I plugged the phone in, no charge. As I walked to the next room to try another charger I told the guy his request was not only unreasonable and physically impossible, but it did not sound legitimately necessary.  "If you required a signed letter, why didn't the representative  tell me that back on May 6th? Or on May 7th? This new hoop for me to jump through is ridiculous, unnecessary and I'm fairly sure illegal (bla bla bla)".  I plugged the phone into the other charger;  nothing. That's when I realized the power was out...gone, and I needed to fix that. I live off the grid and generate my own power.  I explained this to the guy but he kept yapping.  At this point, I had walked down to the inverter to see what was up and there was a problem. I needed to end the call, but the guy would not stop!  I finally had to raise my voice and tell him, "My phone's about to die, and I have no power; without power I have no internet and my phone's going to die; I'm my own power company, so I have to go fix this problem RIGHT NOW, if I can. He said he would call me back. I had to explain again that my phone would be dead long before he could call back, an I neeed to go. It was like talking to a brick wall with a recorded message playing inside it...he did not hear me so I spoke even louder "Look, I've done everything you asked. You confirmed you got the first letter I emailed (after quite some time, he had), if you really needed a signed letter, you would have asked for weeks ago; you've never said you needed my signature when this happened before, either; I think you're just stalling and holding my money from me because if you take the $60 you owe me, times 100,000 customers, and you withhold it from me and all your other customers for a week or two weeks, all that money collecting interest in your account, that's incentive to not reutrn my money promptly;  I'M OUT OF TP; I NEED MY MONEY NOW! Just put the money back on my card! I have to go...NOW! (bla bla bla).  When I stopped for air he offered, again, to call me back.  Five minutes later, phone beeping, me exasperated, I had no choice but to hang up and nothing was resolved.  And I was still out of TP.

Since that little row I have called them three times.  Nothing gets resolved.  One woman would not let me speak to a supervisor or any other employee, she just kept repeating, like a recording, "I'm sorry Miss Compton, I cannot do that. I'm sorry Ms. Compton, I cannot do that....".  Another time, the pre-recorded message with the prompts you have to wade through to get to a person changed after the system recognized my card number and it would not give me to a person. The recording said three times that I would be receiving a letter in 7-10 business day, and the agent have no additional information, then "Goodbye...click".  It sounde like the recording "hung up".  I was livid.  But as I did go to hang up myself, I heard Muzak come on.  It was a trick.  I had to hold a good half hour before a person answered. Two people later and I was told what the recording said, but I asked why no  refund from StraightTalk? I told her I'd told them twice before that Straight Talk said they would refund the money to the bank as soon as the bank called them, so why have they not called Straight Talk?  She would not answer.  I told her it's been nearly a whole month since they blocked my card, and this was totally unacceptable.  I am STILL OUT OF T.P.!!!!

 Finally, having had more than enough, I asked for the address for the agent for service of process.  The did not understand. She kept giving me the address where they were at, and I could not make her understand what that meant.  I gave up and got their address and will find the agent for service of legal process's address later.  I was looking for it when I found this site.  I won't get my money, I'm fairly certain, just like last time.  Multiply me times a million of their depositors, and as I said, that's a lot of extra interest and profit for Green Dot if they wrongfully withhold peoples' money for ten, fifeen, twenty days...and then keep half or 2/3 of it in the end.

Now, let me connect this event with the last time something like this happened, and you can see why I'm so angry despite the actual dollar amounts being relatively small.  Small change, huge life disruption!    This "event" with Green Dot was foreshadowed about a month earlier, on April Fool's Day (which is why I remember it).  I noticed my system had been hacked into (phone and computer, almost certainly through my WIFI router).  Sadly, I've been through this twice before, once about a year ago, again in January, and now.  I could see the hacker's bizarre "foot prints" so I called the police because after the last two incidents, I was beginning to recognize "patterns" of unusual "quirks" in both my phone and the laptop that were consistent with the prior to incidents, so I knew what was going on, but I had disconnected the WIFI router and changed email addresses, passwords, everything I could think of, so I did not expect her to be able to get my new billing information this time.  Please, bear with the seemingly unrelated story of the hacker, because if it were not for the hacker I would not have had to dispute transactions 3 times and get 3 new cards and get ripped off by Green Dot Corporation.

The woman I suspected of hacking into my system last year "just happened" to have been parked on the road in front of my house the day before the quirky activity began; when I walked outside and got in the car to pull out and drive to the store, having seen me going to the car, the hacker (a woman named Jude who I met when someone brought her by my house about a year ago to ask if I would sell her my extra generator because hers broke...I know her, but I don't KNOW her).  She got out of her car, walked up my driveway "to say Hi" (out of the blue, after not seeing her for maybe 8 months), with a brand new (giant) Samsung cell phone in hand.  She said she came be to see if I still had a spare generator she could buy (right), which I didn't. Then she asked how our mutual acquaintance was and I said I hadn't seen him for a while. She began to pry, like she was investigating something, at which point I gathered she may be using the phone as a voice recorder so I said very little.  She was leaning a little in my car - resting her elbows on the door where the window was down, very casually, like she was trying to keep the sun out of her eyes.  She then asked me if I could tell him, whenever I next saw him, that -- let me write this like she said it:  "When you see him, will you tell him that somehow AT&T got our phone numbers crossed?"  [me] "Crossed? You mean, like old-fashioned party lines? or..."   [Jude] "I don't know.  But the police came by my house the other day and showed me (and here I don't remember if she said they showed her records or an actual phone) and my calls were on his phone, and his were on my phone!  I thought [our friend] should know, you know; I wouldn't want him freaking out like last year!" 

Long story short, I thing that's when she "kyped" my information.  What I've learned is that there is a way for a computer savvy person to collect data from another's cell phone using their own cell phone doing something Smart People call "bootstrapping" using a feature on cell phones called NFC.  

Allow Wikipedia to explain:

NEAR FIELD COMMUNICATION DEVICES:

"NFC and Bluetooth are both short-range communication technologies that are integrated into mobile phones. Smartphones equipped with NFC can be paired with NFC Tags or stickers which can be programmed by NFC apps to automate tasks; that is, to allow for a change of phone settings, a text to be created and sent, an app to be launched, or any number of commands to be executed, limited only by the NFC app and other apps on the smartphone.  These applications are perhaps the most practical current uses for NFC since it does not rely on a company to provide service [EMPHASIS ADDED] but can be utilized immediately by anyone anywhere with an NFC-equipped smartphone and an NFC tag.   NFC sets up more quickly than standard Bluetooth; a connection between NFC devices is automatically established in less than a tenth of a second. With a maximum working distance of no more than 20 cm [my note here, 20 cm is about the width of my laptop's screen].  NFC apps can allow for a change of phone settings, a text to be created and sent, an app to be launched, or any number of commands to be executed, limited only by the NFC app and other apps on the smartphone. NFC devices can be used in contactless payment systems, similar to those currently used in credit cards and electronic ticketsmartcards, and allow mobile payment to replace or supplement these systems.  Microsoft provides the "Wallet hub" in Windows Phone 8 for NFC payment, and can integrate multiple NFC payment services within a single application.

Bootstrapping other connections[edit]

NFC offers a low-speed connection with extremely simple setup, and can be used to bootstrap more capable wireless connections.   Nokia, Samsung, BlackBerry and Sony have used NFC technology to pair Bluetooth headsets, media players, and speakers with one tap in its NFC-enabled devices. The same principle can be applied to the configuration of Wi-Fi networks. Samsung Galaxy devices have a feature named S-Beam—an extension of Android Beam that uses NFC (to share MAC Address and IP addresses) and then uses Wi-Fi Direct to share files and documents."

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So if she got her phone within 20 cm of mine for 1/10th of one second at any time when she was gabbing, she could have "connected" our phones and essentially "snatched" the IP & MAC address for the phone, router and laptop, my WIFI configurations, as well as data and files to send text messages, etc. from other phones EVEN WHEN THEY'RE OFF, etc., and essentially use that to set up other devices as servers.  Wikipedia's explanation of NFC equipped devices certainly explains how she was able pay her bills from my bank account, since my bill payment data is in my system for my auto-paid bills.

A brief background is essential to a full understanding of the present situation:

I suspect Jude because at the time I met her, our mutual acquaintance's phone had also been "broken into", and he had told me he was having all kinds of issues with his phone turning on and off by itself, called "dropping", but only to certain people or entities, he was being called by collections departments of several issuers of credit cards telling him that payments were late on several different credit cards (not one of which he applied for or used), that his hacked information was also being used to pay bills from his account that weren't his, accounts for movies and music set up with his information but not by him, and he said he believed it was Jude (who was good friends with his ex-girlfriend) because his ex brought Jude over to their house to ask if he could fix her jeep, which he could.  He said that while he would work on the Jeep, they would sit inside and talk, and Jude was often there for hours; she always had her cell phone in hand or by her side. He thought nothing of it then.  He told me that Jude had been teaching his ex "computer stuff", and that Jude told him she used to work with computers a lot, gone to school to learn about them.  It was during this time he brought her to me to ask about the generator.  She had to make two payments for my generator.  When she came by to make the second payment she gave me a lift to the store, and I asked her outright if she understood what our mutual acquaintance meant when he said he thought she'd "hacked" his phone, if that was possible.  She said [I'll never forget her words] "anything's possible.  I mean, I have a computer science degree, and I could hack into anything if I wanted to, but I wouldn't DARE do that...I could lose my job for doing something like that."

The first day my mechanic friend told me what was going on, we were on the phone and I was responding to what he was telling me; when I finished speaking it was silent. I asked if he was there (hello? HellO?), and heard the AT&T start-up tune that plays when an AT&T phone gets turned on.  Thing is, I didn't turn it off, and the battery was full. When it came on I went to Recent Calls so I could tap on the last incoming call to call him back, but his name and number were not in my call log...they had been removed, remotely.  I then went to Contacts and called him back.  He said that had been happening to him a lot lately. Then weird things happened to my phone, and then came the unauthorized charges.  I knew it had to do with my phone (I didn't have a computer or router then), but that was about all I knew, so I changed phone numbers.

Things were quiet until January of this year.  I had been without a computer or internet for some time, but last year I was able to buy a new laptop and get internet service and a router (I received a modest inheritance and replaced some things that had broken over the years, and I added a kitchen to my cabin.  Things were crazy and disorganized at home while the construction was going on and I was a bit overwhelmed.  On January 15th of this year I needed to confirm that a bill was paid so I called WalMart Money Card customer service for a transaction history.  There were charges listed that I did not recognize, but I could not understand some of the merchant names because of the way the computer-generated "voice" mispronounces things. I just knew they weren't anything I'd purchased.  A friend helped me get my WalMart card registered on line so I could see all the transactions, and I was stunned to see approximately 18 payments totaling about $600 made from my account over a six month period that were not mine (all on line services).  I contacted WalMart Money Card cust svc again to dispute the transactions.  At the time, I had enough money in a local bank account, from the inheritance, I wasn't pinching pennies (which is why I didn't notice the money missing for so long...that and the fact that Green Dot does not send any kind of statements), and since I'd not had a computer for a couple years, I had no clue about the on line service.

Green Dot cust svc reps told me to print a transaction dispute form out from their web site, fill it out, mail it to them. I did. A month later, only 3 of the transactions were reversed, and I got a letter saying they would not reverse the rest. I got mad. I called back to ask why. They said because the merchants told them they WERE authorized transactions.  I didn't buy it so I called the two remaining merchants, one which took 4 payments and the second took 9 payments from my account, to find out what was up.  

One of them said they could not find my payment info (card # or name) in their system.  I said the payments must be there because the "bank" told me they'd spoken to the merchant and the merchant confirmed the charges as valid, so it was there. I then conferenced in the WalMart Card service rep, who did NOT want to deal with the merchant, but I was pushy.  It took over an hour and a half for the merchant to find the payments, and its representative said that she found my card number but it wasn't an account in my name. The Green Dot rep asked if I let anyone else use my card, to which I replied that I had not. I asked the merchant the name on the account and she replied, "It's for a Jude Patrick. Do you know who that is?"  I think steam must have come out of my ears as I explained what I thought had happened.  Green Dot was not going to refund the money without a police report number, but the police would not take a report then, either, but the merchant agreed to pay the bank back so the GD rep reluctantly agreed to return the money to me.  

The second merchant, with the most charges, had a smart cust svc rep, and since I by then suspected what had happened and explained it, she stopped me and said, "sounds like identity theft to me. Of course we'll refund the money. But I can only go back 90 days." They did refund all but about $45; Green Dot refused to return the remaining $45.  I was mad, but I had too much going on to waste my time over it and let it go. I changed cards and passwords and stuff all over again. That was about five months ago.  By March, the kitchen addition was done and things settled down.  I also had spent all but a few hundred dollars of my inheritance getting it done and was adjusting to being back on my low SS Disability income. 

Fast forward to last month, May of 2015.  After Jude stopped by on April Fool's Day and the wierdness began again I phoned the police.  They would not make a report (again) because they don't understand how someone could hack into my system that way and they are not equipped to investigate cyber crime, and I could not prove harm enough to give them probable cause, even though I could show them that Jude had remotely accessed my phone, obtained my email address and password from the phone, used to hack through my WIFI into my computer system.  Six weeks ago, I could not have explained it even as well as just did, which is not very well, but I'm learning.  I will be calling them again to report identity theft, but I doubt they'll report that, either.  I filed a complaint with the FBI Cyber Crime Unit via its website, but they have not responded.  This has to stop!  

It's bad enough having to deal with Jude's apparently unstoppable invasion, but having to deal with Green Dot is really exacerbating the problem.  This time, they made me jump through more hoops than in January-February, they keep adding to the list of things I have to do, and each time they say it will take about ten working days (anew) bla bla bla.  This time, they went too far, insisting I find a way to get my SIGNATURE into a computer and email them my SIGNATURE.  Why? so they can use it to commit fraud somewhere else?  I don't think so. Green Dot Corp does NOT require a signature; they don't do ANYTHING on paper, which is where signatures go.  I smell a rat.  And I'm STILL OUT OF TOILET PAPER!!