What is going on?

Say, hypotethetically, you borrow $25K to buy the lake house. The bank have now turned around and said you owe them $100k ??

Tears indeed. And sometimes the energy needed to sort these things out will just about sink you. Hugs.

What has the lawyer said? What are the bank proposing to do?

Our initial lawyer hasn't even returned our panicked phone calls from Thursday, our new lawyer should be calling us today. The bank has said sorry - when are you going to start paying us.

Line of credit is frozen, OH queries this, bank vice president calls us in for a meeting, we actually owe them about four times the amount we initially asked about

What was the amount stated on your Line of Credit agreement when you signed it? Are you saying you exceeded it by a factor of 4 and didn't request the increased amount and sign an amended/new agreement? If not, and you were not aware, where did you think all this extra money was coming from?

No thankfully we hadn't used our line of credit (or so we thought) and we didn't know where the smaller amount of money had come from, we queried it several times - we even deposited it in our line of credit so it was way over our borrowing power and didn't touch it for a year (we even questioned the bank manager who said our account is clear, it's our money). Now the amount is 4 times owed than what we initially thought as they credited us loads of money, I suppose we are lucky in the fact we do have some things to sell.

It all came about from the profit of the sale of a house being mishandled. Do you not think we are kicking ourselves for not insiting that the financials were checked and double checked (we asked three/for times as we were not sure it was right). If this situation occured a year ago it wouldn't be the stress it is today. We are angry that it has taken FOUR sodding years to come to light. This time last year we could have paid it off.

Is the short of this that the bank put money in your account that wasn't yours and you spent it on the say-so of the bank manager and a lawyer?

Vancouver is apparently well known for being a centre for card fraud.

Yeah, and a bit more actually as they also zeroed the line of credit and said the extra was the profit from the sale of the house, we couldn't understand it at the time as we seemed to have about $20k more than we thought we should have, but it turns out to have been lots more than that. No wonder we thought life was easy in Canada eh?

Ack! That's horrible. Something similar happened last time I was involved in a property transaction, I was credited with a pile of money from some unrelated sale the lawyer was dealing with at the time. On balance I think I should have withdrawn it in cash and fled to the Costa del Crime.

Ah you see we even got a spare cheque - that we took to the bank and paid into our fully paid up (that shouldn't have been in hindsight) line of credit. Oh well, some options have come to light now it's not the weekend and things don't look to be quite so bleak as they first did Friday morning. Some good news on the property we live in its gained $100k since we bought 4 years ago so there is an option there. And our payback charges for the lake house are less than we thought, we'd lose money on that one but at least we could afford to live a little.

Next time I even have a faint query to do with money I will insist that it is investigated fully, in a timely manner, not 4 years later

And in writing too I expect! Fingers crossed it gets sorted

The fraudsters just change their methods and of course it happens everywhere. One in the UK I thought was innovative - they targeted some petrol stations by impersonating the IT company that looks after the stations payment registers and "upgraded" them by installing extra equipment that recorded the card details and PIN numbers.

I've had cards in the UK for over 20 years without any problem. One month after getting a CC in Canada the details were used fraudulently - I don't know how but the bank paid and issued a new card. I know the bank will never reveal how the details were taken so I won't even bother asking.

Moral of this story.....if you sell a house, boat, car, what have you, but in particular a house, of course Lawyer types handle the transaction (or should).

If the Lawyer screws up the settlement and you end up with more cash it’s the Lawyers fault, but you have an obligation to take it up with the Lawyer who then has to clean up the mess.

If the Lawyer did everything correct and the bank messed up the subsequent deposit to your account, i.e. 10K becomes 100k for instance, you bring it to their attention; it seems PIFF POFF did that...

But the overpayment (if I have digested this correctly) is still there and has to be resolved.

Determining the overpayment compared to the Lawyers disbursement should be easy...if this had happened to me, I would have gone back to the Lawyer and the Bank (mainly the bank, but original Lawyer for some kind of letter) to sort it out. Not put my head in the sand, as bean counters will figure it all out eventually.

As for SCAM Central here in Canada (what bollocks)....not my experience in 23 years....

Certainly the criminal element seems to be striking closer to home skimming cards etc; one family member has had money taken from an account. Money was taken out in Ontario after they arrived back in NB, a few thousand but the bank sorted it for them, and quickly. Irving Big Stops are believed to be the latest hit here in the Fredericton area.

Like many, we have always been careful, but how the hell do you know if a Gas station has been compromised. I went ape-shit in the Weatherspoons near Traflagar Square when the barmaid scanned my card under the bar where you could not see what she was up to. I complained to the duty manager which was pointless, they took offence to me taking offence…OK then. I told RBS where they could stick their credit card.

Anyway, after 4 years back in the third world (Camberley/Farnborough) I'm so glad I no longer have to live there. More crime there than you can shake a stick at.

No place is perfect and Canada certainly is not, but those who think the UK is so much better....don't let the door hit you in the ASS.

Like me, no one asked you to come over or stick around.

My wife's had her card skimmed twice in four years (both times in Montreal), each time the bank has called her, refunded the money, and changed her card (and we've changed the PIN. I haven't so far.

I less less evidence of card fraud here in Canada than I did in the UK, though that may be due to less people spread over a much wider area. In the UK we regularly used to catch East Europeans attaching card cloning devices and micro cameras to outside bank machines, but here most of the machines are covered by CCTV cameras.

I do like being able to go into a bank in Canada and not be seperated from the teller by armoured screens, and also to be able to get my bank card replaced within 5 minutes instead of having to wait a week or more.

We had a knock on the door last week and it was The Welcome Wagon, I thought the lady was a bit pushy so I trusted my instincts and didn't let her in..I'm glad I did..Welcome Wagon my arse..

I had my card scammed in the UK about 4 years ago ... bank refunded me and it became clear that restaurants/bars that wandered off with your card were cloning them.

Hub was victim of id theft years back - someone took a loan out in his name.

after starting this process we discovered hubby has a problem with his police cert - apparently he was cautioned for fraud!! He wasn't. But knowing his ID was stolen for the loan around the same time we think whoever it was got nicked as well. grrr.

tried to appeal the police cert- police say they will get back to you in a month... nada since appeal went in last october... verbally they have said they have no records of the incident and they are not sure what to do. Asked them to put this all in writing but no letter turned up. call them every two weeks they say they have sent a letter - it never arrives. Maybe they are sending it to the so and so that did all this!

Thankfully CHC hasn't queried the police certificate status (no live trace) for hubby... if they do i will be royally miffed.