Chase denies hacking in vanishing balances

Chase Bank experienced technical difficulties for over an hour Monday night, worrying customers who logged into their accounts and saw their balance at $0 or were unable to get any access to them at all.

A spokesman for the bank said it was strictly an internal technical issue and customers' accounts were not in danger.

"The problems are an issue with the checking account portion of chase.com, nothing to do with mortgage or credit banking. We have a technology problem regarding customers balance information that we are working to resolve," the spokesman to CBS News. "It has nothing to do with cyber threats or hacks. It is an internal issue. We are very sorry to our customers for the inconvenience."

Within two hours, the bank tweeted that the issue was resolved. Customers reported seeing their balances once again.

Still, hundreds of Chase users expressed their frustration on Twitter and Facebook. Many reported seeing their account balances listed as "$0" on mobile devices, while others said they got a "System Unavail" message when logged into the bank's website on their computers. Read more >>

Man jailed for cashing Chase check at Chase Bank - loses car and job

Image via WikipediaBy Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story
A 28-year-old construction worker was mistakenly thrown in jail after trying to deposit a check at a local Chase bank, and the whole ordeal ended up costing him his car and job.

KING5 reported that Ikenna Njoku of Auburn, Washington received a home buyer rebate from the IRS, which Chase Bank sent him in the form of a $8,463.21 cashier's check. When he tried to cash the check, a teller at his local Chase Bank suspected it was a forgery and took it, along with his driver license and credit card, to contact bank support.

When he arrived at the bank the next day to get his money, he was arrested for trying to cash a fraudulent check and thrown in jail.

The following day, on Friday, Chase Special Investigations realized the mistake and left a message with the police department. But Njoku ended up staying in jail until Monday morning.

In the meantime, he was fired from his job for failing to show up to work and his car had been towed from the bank's parking lot and was later sold at an auction.

A year after the incident, Chase has yet to apologize to Njoku.

“It’s one thing to make a mistake,” Felix Luna, a Seattle attorney who offered to help Njoku, said. “It’s one thing to make multiple errors of judgment like Chase has made and then, once you realize that your error has caused such harm to somebody else, to just ignore it for a year. I think he deserved better. I think all their customers do.”