
Nick Barthel, Esq. was recently interviewed by Renee Koury and Stephanie Sierra in an ABC7 News article titled, “Mysterious Hacker Turns Out to Be Victim’s Own Brother, 7 On Your Side Investigation Reveals.” This article discusses how a self-described hacker used his brother’s identity to get an online loan from SoFi Bank. Soon after, the purported thief wrote to 7 On Your Side and wanted them to help his victim and expose what he called weaknesses of online banking. The victim said SoFi insisted he took out a $52,000 personal loan, demanded he start making loan payments of $2,400 per month, and opened and closed its investigation on the same day after finding “no fraud.”
Experts responded to this by saying how California laws include broad protections for identity theft victims; and how banks are definitely supposed to investigate when there’s a fraud accusation. With this, Barthel stated, “It’s fact-dependent on what’s a diligent investigation…If you are an identity theft victim and an account is opened in your name, you have the right to demand that application… so that you can see what information is floating out there and what was used to open that account.”
To read the article in full, simply click here.