Who is sending me money?

February 24, 2024 5:50 PM

I recently noticed an unexpected deposit into my chequing account, labelled as coming from "TRANSFERWISE." Apparently that's the former name for Wise, a money sending company. I searched for more activity on my account and saw that in the last year I had almost $3000 deposited from TRANSFERWISE! Where is this money coming from? Could this be some sort of scam?

Most of the transfers are for $60 (sometimes 4x per day) but there are two for around $1000.

I called the bank and they said that the most likely explanation is that someone must think they are sending money to another account but entered my bank account details by mistake. It seems unlikely that someone would send so much money to the same person and never realize that it was going to the wrong person.

The bank said if I wanted to I could escalate it to the fraud department, but they didn't actively encourage me to do so. I don't want to spend this money and then find out later than I'm on the hook for it.

posted by krunk to Work & Money (21 answers total)

I would call Wise and ask them what to do and what your liability would be because the worst case scenario isn't that you're on the hook for the money it's that you're in the hook for the money + interest.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:53 PM on February 24

Response by poster: The only way I have found to contact their support team involves signing up for an account with Wise, which I don't want to do. There's a "complaint" form, but is this really a complaint? I guess if it's the only way to contact them, it'll have to do.
posted by krunk at 5:59 PM on February 24 [3 favorites]

This doesn't quite fit the pattern, but there is a scam where people send money, then desperately contact you saying it was a mistake and they need it back. You transfer it back, they have laundered money, the person they took it from maybe comes after it from you. So I wouldn't spend it. Legally it may not be yours. I would followup with the bank.
posted by lookoutbelow at 6:37 PM on February 24 [4 favorites]

I belong to an organisation that pays a per-diem and reimburses costs when I travel to attend organisation events. For all of last financial year, my reimbursements where going into another account due to an error (by me or them) on the original form seeking bank deposit details, and I didn't notice until I went to do my tax.

I was reimbursed and I don't know what happened to the wrongly channeled money.

If I was in your shoes, I'd open a separate account and shift all these unusual deposits there, then wait and see.
posted by Thella at 6:53 PM on February 24 [5 favorites]

Having worked at a Bank in IT my confusion is that there are normally safeguards to prevent someone from just transposing a digit and having money end up in the wrong account. For instance, there are "check digits" used so that not all sequences of digits are even valid account numbers. Also, the depositor name and institution name would need to match. But my experience is with ACH (Automated Clearing House).

So the above only applies if TRANSFERWISE is using the ACH system to accomplish transfers. A Google search looking for ACH and WISE suggests that sometimes they may use Wire and sometimes ACH. Also it talks about International transfers. So to me it does seem suspicious, but I could be wrong.
posted by forthright at 7:03 PM on February 24 [1 favorite]

According to GetHuman, a website that collects customer service contact information for various companies, you can call Wise/TransferWise at [phone]. A Google search of the phone number seems to confirm it's Wise. As others have suggested, I would contact them and see if they can sort things out.
posted by Meldanthral at 7:10 PM on February 24 [11 favorites]

It could be somebody's innocent mistake, but there are also plenty of sleazy and scary possibilities. I'd suggest escalating this to fraud, just to be safe. Do not spend a dime of that money. This is like the beginning of a film noir movie, and you do not want to be the greedy shmoe who says, "I've always had hard luck, and it's about time things went my way!"
posted by Ursula Hitler at 12:43 AM on February 25 [5 favorites]

This has gone on for a year? If this is a scam, they are certainly playing some sort of long game. I think this is an error on Wise's part or one of their customer's part. I personally would not do anything at this time. If I was really worried, I might open another account and move that amount of money into as suggested above. I also don't think you would be legally liable for the money. Maybe morally liable, but no one has come asking for almost a year now. When I send a wire or an ACH the bank asks me to confirm I have the correct account numbers, ABA numbers, etc. They say that it is final.

You say you don't want to spend it and then have to pay it back. With all due respect, you didn't even know it was there until much later. Either you have enough balances in the account to not worry about the balance when using the account for everyday needs or you don't look at this account very often meaning it is a savings account or in your mind an account to save in. The bank did not encourage you to bump it up to fraud so they are not concerned about it.

I would do nothing and wait and see if anything becomes of it. The problem is to decide at what point do you feel comfortable thinking it is yours. If you wait, do you wait another year, 3 years, 5 years,? The other question is how much time and effort do you put into correcting someone else's mistake and giving them back money? Only you can decide those two questions.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 2:42 AM on February 25

If you dig through their support pages it is eventually possible to email them:

https://wise.com/help/contact/channels/email

Wise are perfectly trustworthy, but of course scammers can use them. I would expect it's some automatic business payments of some sort that someone mistyped the account number for.
posted by samj at 2:49 AM on February 25

1) It seems you may be in Canada so I'm not sure if US-based answers will be relevant but:

2) My US-based experience says: I would escalate this with your bank, because fraudulent/unauthorized ACH withdrawals are also a thing that I have seen happen (very occasionally) and some entity somewhere (which may or may not actually be the company WISE) seems to have the details they need to do ACH transfers and seems to be either careless or malicious.
posted by needs more cowbell at 3:07 AM on February 25 [3 favorites]

Have you gone through every transaction on your account and checked whether there are also mystery withdrawals to match the mystery deposits? Someone may be using your account to launder money.
posted by heatherlogan at 6:22 AM on February 25 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks everyone for the ideas!

heatherlogan, that was a great suggestion – I went through my withdrawals for the last year and thankfully there wasn't anything unusual.

The phone number listed for Wise appears to be closed for the weekend, so I've emailed them and will arrange an appointment with my bank.
posted by krunk at 7:41 AM on February 25 [1 favorite]

Just chiming in to echo samj: "Wise are perfectly trustworthy" .. I've used Wise/Transferwise for a decade, and it's almost certainly a mistake by the sender so you may eventually be asked to return the money.
posted by anadem at 7:55 AM on February 25 [1 favorite]

fraudulent/unauthorized ACH withdrawals are also a thing that I have seen happen

Just as a data point, this has happened to me, to the tune of $10K, so beware. I caught it on the same day it happened, which SUBSTANTIALLY improved the recovery process. Monitor your account like a hawk from now on.
posted by aramaic at 7:57 AM on February 25 [2 favorites]

People are suggesting that you move the money into a separate account (presumably so you don't spend it) Depending on what you find out in the next week as you talk with Wise and the bank, if you are still uneasy I would seriously consider opening a new unlinked account and use the new account as your primary checking account - move any autodeposits to the new account, shift your spending over and make sure that if there are fraudulent withdrawals there is not much money there to steal. It can take while to find everything that needs to switched but it might be worth the effort to improve your peace of mind.
posted by metahawk at 1:24 PM on February 25 [8 favorites]

I would worry about someone suddenly figuring out there was a mistake and withdrawing all the deposits. If you’ve moved them to another account, that could leave you overdrafted to the max—not good. So I echo metahawk’s recommendation: open a new account and move your usual operations to it. Regard the old account as a holding zone for mystery payments.

Good luck. Hope we hear back eventually that it was an unknown rich uncle with a pawky sense of humor.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 7:18 AM on February 26

Is there anyone who might feel they owe you money? I have a friend-of-a-friend who is doing this currently with someone that he feels he owes money to; he hasn’t bothered communicating directly about it because he feels that would make it look like he was hoping to be thanked.
posted by corb at 9:27 AM on February 26

Response by poster: Quick update:

Wise said:
> Regarding liability, you don't have any liabilities with us if you do not have an account and have not initiated these transfers.

I've sent them more info so they can investigate further.

I've spoken to my bank branch, who told me to call the fraud line, who told me to speak with my bank branch 🙃

I'm going back to my bank tomorrow to hopefully get some more information.
posted by krunk at 12:33 PM on February 29 [1 favorite]

I'm sorry you're getting the runaround! In my experience as a teller/CSR it can be hard to get clarification on the true source of an ACH, sometimes even after I've spoken to the accounting department at our bank (but I would definitely call the accounting department if you were my customer showing up with this issue). The main concern that comes to mind for me is that it's not 100% certain that these were actually done by Wise just because that's what the description that's visible to you says.
posted by needs more cowbell at 3:08 AM on March 1

Response by poster: Another update from Wise:

"I've located the payments within our system and reached out to another team within Wise to see if we can reach out to the payer and provide you with a more detailed answer. Unfortunately, I am unable to provide you with an estimate for when we may have an answer for you.

I am sorry it is taking so long, but it's a very rare case, as we have to consider privacy laws and are unable to straight up tell you, who the money is coming from."

So at least it definitely is coming from Wise.
posted by krunk at 6:45 AM on March 1 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: I ended up opening a new chequing account and moving all my money into it. Thanks everyone for the tips! My bank was essentially useless.

I’ll update this thread if I hear anything more from Wise.
posted by krunk at 7:40 AM on March 5 [1 favorite]