Southern Alberta woman falls prey to fraud, is contacted by law firm to pay back bank

A southern Alberta woman had her personal information used to fraudulently obtain a credit card. The bank went after her to repay thousands in charges.

Katrina Witwer had her personal information fraudulently used to obtain a credit card, while the bank that issued it took legal action to try and have her pay it back.

On March 12, Witwer was surprised by a pending credit card application she never filled out.

It was then the Airdrie woman did a credit report check and found out a BMO credit card was also authorized under her name with a limit of $22,000.

That was issued in February, and $17,000 had already been spent.

Witwer was reluctant to be interviewed, so her husband, Dustin Heywood, spoke to CTV News.

“We called BMO to identify this as fraud. They told us over the phone, “Go into a branch with your ID and we will sort it out,” said Heywood.

Heywood has expertise in this area, working as a hacker for IBM X-Force Red to help companies identify cybersecurity issues.

He has been cited in multiple articles, including a CTV News article about customers at BMO being breached due to large-scale data theft.

The couple then filed a police report with the Airdrie RCMP.

Authorities there informed Witwer her ID had been used to try and purchase OxyContin.

There was also another incident involving her ID in northern Alberta.

Witwer did have her pending application for a credit card shut down while BMO verified her identity and also shut down the fraudulent credit card.

“They closed the account right then and there,” said Heywood.

Witwer was assured she would be looked after; however, last week, they found out a law firm performed a hard credit check on their file on July 14.

The firm was pressuring Witwer into paying back the $17,000.

“We tried to tell him, like, ‘This is a fraud case.’ He says, ‘No, no, no, no, stop, this is the way this is going to happen,’ and then starts to go all lawyerly-like,” said Heywood.

Witwer told the bank she was speaking to CTV News on Tuesday morning, and the case was dropped later in the day.

“All I want from this is for them to back off, give us an apology, correct my (wife’s) credit report to take off the derogatory credit information and to make sure they put in steps to make sure this doesn’t affect anybody else,” said Heywood.

BMO provided a statement regarding the incident:

“We immediately reviewed this matter after the client was in contact with us and are working to resolve it as part of our regular process. We confirm that the law firm will not be taking any further steps in the matter. In addition, we are working with the credit bureau to update the client’s file as soon as possible and ensure there is no impact on their credit report.”

Vanessa Iafolla, principal at Anti-Fraud Intelligence Consulting, isn’t surprised by BMO’s handling of the incident.

“I think this is actually part of the bigger institutional, structural, societal problem,” said Iafolla.

“It shouldn’t take going to the media every time for our banks to do the right thing. It just shouldn’t.

“I’m going to be hearing these kinds of things again and again, because nothing is really going to change until financial institutions are made to change.”