| Business: Bank secures major account
A SWEDISH bank which has just opened its doors for business in Coventry city centre has secured the business of one of the area's most successful local house builders. Handelsbanken, which moved into its new Coventry office at 6 The Quadrant, beat off competition from the major banks to win the account of rapidly expanding Ian Neale Homes Ltd. The management team at Handelsbanken's Coventry office have excellent career track records with the UK's major banks but believe Handelsbanken with its emphasis on building personal relationships with its customers, will offer a different perspective in commercial banking to the local business community. The Swedish bank already has more than 600 branches worldwide and more than 40 in Britain. Ian Neale will be a customer of the new Handelsbanken Coventry branch.
BCSO arrest two for bank fraud
Investigators with the Bay County Sheriff's Office have arrested two Panama City women and are looking for two others they believe are connected to a fraud case involving two local banking institutions. The women went to two different Panama City banks at different times and each opened a bank account in their names using five dollars, investigators said in a news release. The woman had already stolen checks from two different individuals and once the four accounts had been opened they wrote checks for cash to themselves using the stolen checks. Once the checks had been deposited, the women immediately went to a different branch of the same bank and withdrew the deposit. More than $9,000 was stolen from Innovations and Panhandle Educators Federal Credit Union, said Sheriff's Spokeswoman Ruth Sasser.
Learn how you can protect yourself from identity theft
A first-ever review of Secret Service files has found that only half of the cases of identity theft involved technological devices, such as computers, scanners and digital cameras, and only 10 percent were done exclusively through the Internet. In a fifth of the other cases, thieves stole personal data the old-fashioned way. Low-tech tactics included rerouting mail by sending change of address requests to institutions handling credit card and bank accounts, swiping items right from residents' mailboxes, and "Dumpster diving" -- going through trash for information used to produce counterfeit documents and to open credit accounts. Researchers from Utica College's Center for Identity Management and Information Protection in New York analyzed 517 closed Secret Service cases of ID theft from 2000 to 2006.
Two charged in check case
Two men who allegedly had the idea of stealing $850 from the Martin Luther King Celebration Committee were arrested Wednesday while trying to cash a fraudulent check written on the organization's bank account.Namee Barakat had just opened his A.S.K. Check Cashing office at its new location on Wilmington Street when his first customers walked in about 8:30 a.m. One presented a check from the MLK Celebration Committee made out to him and said it was for work the pair had done."We just looked it up on the Internet," Barakat said and, as he does with any large check, called the person whose name was on the account. That was Bruce E. Lightner, who helped found the nonprofit group in 1984 and has served as its leader ever since.Barakat asked Lightner whether he had written the check to the man."No," Lightner told him.
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