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My ex-husband keeps trying to find out my banking information. We have been divorced for 3 years but still involved in the family court system. Over the past years, he's

  1. opened closed accounts,

  2. brought his girlfriend along with him to the bank to get information by having her pretend she's me,

  3. given out my social security number, and

  4. filled out transfers requesting money from me.

I've changed banks so he wouldn't know where I banked, but he found out.

Most recently, he went to the bank and attempted to find out information about my RRSP, asking for very specific details. He attempted to get them to fill out a transfer form as if he's going to transfer money. He has no money to transfer to me and even if he did he wouldn't voluntarily do so.

Not only am I tired of this financial abuse but it's causing me so much extra work every time he attempts to find out information. I can not imagine why he needs my information but I assume it's for nothing good.

The bank/s does/do not do anything about this except reassure me that he won't get my information. Any suggestions???

BCLC
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Jen
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    Given the mention of RRSP, I assume this is Canada? Perhaps you could add that tag to the question as the answers are likely to be jurisdiction specific. – GS - Apologise to Monica May 07 '21 at 11:34
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    Do you currently have a lawyer helping you with your ongoing involvement in family court? If yes - you need to talk to your lawyer and not strangers on the internet. – Freiheit May 07 '21 at 13:34
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    This is a legal issue, not a question of personal finance. – chepner May 07 '21 at 14:28
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    And since it is a legal issue, have you taken it to the police? While I'm not a lawyer, and certainly not a Canadian one, the "transfers requesting money from me" certainly seems like criminal fraud to me. – jamesqf May 07 '21 at 16:13
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    @TooTea: "forget about it" is dismissive and counterproductive. I trust the OP to be the best judge of whether a situation is dangerous. – Greg Martin May 07 '21 at 19:26
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    @chepner Securing your money and preventing identity theft are indeed related to personal finance and are on-topic here. – Ben Miller May 07 '21 at 19:40
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    Tell your banks (new and old), tell your lawyer. Now. If they say they're not getting anything, there's not much else you can do after having told them the situation explicitly. – Mast May 08 '21 at 07:38
  • @GregMartin Oh,I'm sorry if my comment came across as not nice,that was really not my intention. It was a sincere request for more information, because I feel that there's a lot of crucial context missing in the question. So let me try again: What "extra work" does the situation cause? – TooTea May 08 '21 at 08:26
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    If he keeps finding out stuff about you and you don't know how, there may be stalkerware on your mobile device. You might want to check with the EFF to find that out. See eg here – RolfBly May 08 '21 at 10:44
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    In many jurisdictions, you don't need a lawyer to deal with this. The guy's activities (impersonation, etc) are criminal offences. Report them to the police. – alephzero May 08 '21 at 12:48
  • @alephzero 'The bank/s does/do not do anything about this except reassure me that he won't get my information.' --> amen! i mean LOL the bank doesn't even call the police in the 1st place? trolololol bank. i think i wouldn't use lawyer for ex. i'd call a police for the ex and then use lawyer for the bank – BCLC May 10 '21 at 16:32

6 Answers6

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Ask your lawyer if it makes sense to press criminal charges against your ex-husband and/or his girlfriend for attempted identity theft, harassment and/or fraud.

Other than that you can only hope that the banks fulfill their promise and won't allow him to succeed. But should he somehow manage to access your bank account, you might be able to take legal actions against the bank. When he somehow manages to fraudulently withdraw funds, then the bank would be obligated to transfer those back to you. If he somehow manages to obtain information about your account balance and transfers, and him knowing that information causes you tangible damage, then you might be able to sue the bank for said damage. They neglected their responsibility to maintain banking confidentiality, and when they don't, then they are liable for damages (again, consult your lawyer for details).

Philipp
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    Could make a criminal complaint against the girlfriend, too. – Orange Coast- reinstate Monica May 07 '21 at 16:04
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    In addition, I would document everything he's done and share that with the bank. That should encourage them keep a closer eye whenever anyone tries to do anything regarding your account. (And in the event of tangible damage, you having warned the bank would be a factor in your favor.) – Teepeemm May 07 '21 at 21:54
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Ryan's Law: if it wasn't written down, it didn't happen

The problem is, it's all just more "He said, she said" unless there is physical evidence.

Collect evidence.

Keep contemporaneous notes of everything

You may remember James Comey describing a having a nagging feeling, right after a meeting, of "I really better take physical notes of that meeting right now while it's fresh in my mind".

Those are called "contemporaneous notes". They are powerful evidence.

You can strengthen their power by having an impartial notary public notarize the notes.

You can also strengthen them by timely giving a copy to your lawyer to put in your file. The lawyer is not impartial, but courts generally trust lawyers' clerical staff to be honest and not perjure themselves.

File police reports

Anytime you hear about a thing like that, file a police report, preferably at the bank while it is open. A police report is simply you having the officer take down your info and make a report. The purpose of police reports is to create evidence for use by courts later.

The officer will take a statement (you can give the officer a copy of those contemporaneous notes) and the officer may also talk to bank staff, and get impartial data from them.

Then, use this as leverage against the ex.

Now, you have stuff you can wave around in court or at settlement hearings. The documentable cases of abuse and attempted crime will put the ex at distinct disadvantage for alimony, custody, asset control and whatnot. If it continues to happen and you keep documenting, the ex could even wind up serving nights in jail for contempt of court. (Brazenly defying a judge's order; there's no trial, it just happens).

Harper - Reinstate Monica
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    Why use a notary? Email is a timestamped digital signature too? – bandybabboon May 08 '21 at 05:14
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    @aliential spoofing email addresses etc is trivial. – alephzero May 08 '21 at 12:50
  • @alephzero Spoofing DKIM is considerably harder. Whilst DKIM should not function as a digital notary service, it does, and we might as well make use of that. – wizzwizz4 May 08 '21 at 14:37
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    @wizzwizz4, I'm pretty sure that most jurisdictions don't accept DKIM signatures as a legal form of notarisation, even if they are created by the likes of big companies such as Google. Likewise, even RFC3161-based and decentralised blockchain-based timestamps are not recognised in most courts, to my knowledge. – Jivan Pal May 08 '21 at 15:50
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    @aliential That works for science. In court, the opposition will do everything they can to discredit the evidence, and they'll be arguing to an unsophisticated judge and jury. Do you really want to fly out some Google techs at your own expense to testify to the accuracy of Gmail timestamps, only to have the opposing counsel screw with their heads and rattle them in cross? – Harper - Reinstate Monica May 08 '21 at 16:53
  • @wizzwizz4: One thing I never figured out is, even if DKIM signatures were suitable for this, how would you figure out what the signature of a domain's server was at a particular point in time? There's no stipulation that the key even exists at the time you want to perform the verification, right? – user541686 May 09 '21 at 00:51
  • @user541686 True, but most servers don't seem to change their keys all that much. – wizzwizz4 May 09 '21 at 11:24
  • @Harper-ReinstateMonica "Do you really want to fly out some Google techs at your own expense" Theoretically, Google might be willing to pick up the tab, if you and/or your lawyer can convince them that it's in Google's business interests to do so (e.g. if setting a legal precedent regarding the capabilities of their products would help their business). – nick012000 May 10 '21 at 06:23
  • Why didn't/wouldn't James Comey just press the record button on phone (and hide phone in pocket) and therefore not have this nagging feeling? This way notes don't necessarily need to be taken right after the meeting. But I would still make those notes anyway. (It's like writing notes after, say, a chess or 9LX game. You have the entire PGN regardless, but the PGN doesn't show what you're thinking.) Oh wait this is what you mean: like even with the recording you take notes anyway? Well notes or no notes, how do you challenge he said she said without the recording? (damn 2 party consent LOL) – BCLC May 10 '21 at 08:58
  • @BCLC "[Comey]...having a nagging feeling, right after a meeting..." - I don't think pressing the record button will record the meeting once it's over? I mean, it'd be a very cool feature... :-) – SusanW May 10 '21 at 09:46
  • @BCLC a) possibly b/c of recording conversation laws, b) yes, probably better to take notes anyway, c) having made notes at the time (ie before there is contention over what happened in the meeting) is a lot stronger than claiming 'but I remember it like this' – mcalex May 10 '21 at 09:51
  • @SusanW before the meeting of course... – BCLC May 10 '21 at 13:16
  • @BCLC Because Comey had no advance reason to believe the meeting would be noteworthy. And when cops record conversations, it's called "wearing a wire" and there's very rigid procedure, approval and backup resources for that - that's drummed into them HARD because otherwise it's inadmissible (and illegal) so useless for their work. – Harper - Reinstate Monica May 10 '21 at 18:19
  • @Harper-ReinstateMonica it's not necessarily about admissible. it's just about remembering. i don't see it as any different from having a perfect memory. you don't have to use the recording in court, just for your own notes...do you get what i mean? in fact, i think 1 party vs 2 party thing is even more reason than in/admissible to not use recordings in court or whatever. so yeah it's just for personal use as a memory aid (or rather memory enhancer) – BCLC May 11 '21 at 05:59
  • @Harper-ReinstateMonica 'Because Comey had no advance reason to believe the meeting would be noteworthy' --> well to be safe, why not just assume every meeting would be noteworthy? better safe than sorry – BCLC May 11 '21 at 06:00
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If he has your social security number, and is handing it out, I'd at least consider trying to get a new Social Insurance number, which you can do if you are the victim of identity theft (clearly yes), and it's likely to recur. Also, get a lawyer, or just make a criminal complaint to the police about what has been happening.

Michael Seifert
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theresawalrus
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I've actually dealt with an almost identical situation more than once. Close your bank account and open a new one in your name. Then have the bank issue a fraud alert on all previous accounts. If your ex-husband and his girlfriend attempt any transactions of any kind on these accounts the bank will involve law enforcement and have fraud charges leveled against your ex-husband and the girlfriend. When doing bank teller transactions on your ATM card specify on the card to use photo id only instead of signing your name on the back of it. If the picture and the info on the ID match your account. Keep a vigilent eye on your account balance and watch for unauthorized transactions and report this to the bank. Do your banking online and have your bills and bank statements online as well to avoid potential mail theft. When banking online as mentioned by other posters secure passwords are essential. Shred documents religiously and DO NOT ALLOW your ex-husband into your dwelling. The reason he has your social insurance number is probably he swiped the card from your purse.

Avoid social media. People share far too much personal information online some of which can be used for ID theft.

If you need documentation with regard to fraud attempts the bank with give you copies of the attempts. A gift from God for your lawyer. :)

One thing I have noticed that people who try fraud are not overly intelligent and can be defeated if you out think them.

In my case , years ago It was the janitor of my apartment using his pass key to rip off tenants. He stole cheques from me and tried to cash them. I reported strange tranactions to the bank. They closed the account. He tried a second cheque and the merchant asked for 2 pieces of ID. Instead of trying to sign my name to the cheques...he signed his own and on the back was his driver license #,social insurance #. True Story by the way...5 tears in prison for that yo-yo :)

A wise man once said, "If everyone is out to get you, paranoia is just wishful thinking"

Old_Fossil
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    Presumably the ex-husband has the OP's Social Insurance Number because they had been married and e.g. filed their taxes not because he snuck into their dwelling after the divorce... – user2705196 May 08 '21 at 16:03
  • In cases of identity theft and fraud I assume worst case scenarios given what he has put her through. That is also a possibility I hadn't considered . – Old_Fossil May 08 '21 at 23:21
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In addition to the other answers I would highly advise the following cyber-security related precautions:

Make sure that all passwords for banking websites, government websites, as well as email accounts are:

  • Fully different from each other. No templates like SecurePhraseA1, SecurePhraseA2, etc.
  • randomly generated
  • ideally 20-40 characters long with every character-class (uppercase, lowercase, numbers, symbols)
  • stored in a password manager which itself has a strong master password.

To reiterate, ensure that no accounts (even things like netflix or your burner email account) share passwords or have easily guessable passwords.

While you're at it, may as well make sure your phone and computer(s) are protected by a password or pattern.

If I was desperate enough to try physically gain access to someone's bank account at the bank, I would definitely be trying to get into any account of theirs, leapfrog from that to their email, then from there to their bank accounts.

twhitney
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    If you're going to put all your eggs in one basket, choose the basket carefully. Depending on OP's security situation, it may be better off on paper in a filing cabinet in their house. – Harper - Reinstate Monica May 07 '21 at 22:45
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    None of my several major financial sites accept passwords over 20 characters long. – Daniel R. Collins May 08 '21 at 03:41
  • @DanielR.Collins Work out what they count as a character (can you use emoji? probably not, but check anyway) and maximise the password entropy from there. – wizzwizz4 May 08 '21 at 14:40
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    @wizzwizz4 using non-ASCII characters in passwords is just asking for operational trouble; the KISS principle comes to mind. Banks have long-established and well-enforced legal responsibilities which are much more powerful than a 6-character emoji password that you might never enter correctly again. – Jivan Pal May 08 '21 at 15:41
  • @JivanPal With many banks, I could easily reset somebody else's password just by looking at their social media (to find out their first pet name, mother's maiden name…). But true; I doubt any of the developers of a “20 character limit” password system ever intended non-ASCII characters to be entered. – wizzwizz4 May 08 '21 at 15:43
  • @wizzwizz4, that's not a matter of the bank's system, that's an OpSec consideration; the user needs to not use such information as credentials, which just comes back to the sound advice of "use random data and store it in a password manager or write it down somewhere safe". – Jivan Pal May 08 '21 at 15:46
  • @JivanPal If a bank instructs (or even mandates; these “security questions” are rarely optional, and not everyone knows you can lie in them) its clients to have bad opsec, I don't trust that bank's talent for opsec. – wizzwizz4 May 08 '21 at 15:50
  • @wizzwizz4, that the security questions are mandatory is not the point. You say it yourself: "not everyone knows you can lie in them". This demonstrates a need to increase public awareness/education of what makes good credentials, not a need to change systems (though I do agree that the vast majority of banks ironically have abysmal security across the board, compared to most other companies. Sidenote: it is not so abysmal in Europe these days, as mandatory 2FA has become much more prevalent). – Jivan Pal May 08 '21 at 15:53
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    Re those 20-40 character passwords, you've now created passwords so secure that you can't even access the account yourself :-( – jamesqf May 08 '21 at 16:50
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    @wizzwizz4: Indeed, many of us HAVE to lie on those "security" questions, because they all seem to depend on having grown up in an upper middle class western culture. I mean, favorite restaurant in college, like I had money to eat in restaurants back then? So I have to make up random lies, and then write down the question and lie for future use. Real secure, that :-) – jamesqf May 08 '21 at 16:52
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In addition to the recommendations in the other answers, it is likely a good idea to place a credit freeze with the three credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.

Your ex-husband has access to all of your personal information, including your social security number. It would be easy for him to open a credit account in your name. A freeze would provide a considerable impediment to opening new accounts. You can "thaw" the freezes whenever you need to open a new account.

The process can be begun at these links:

Ian Campbell
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