Misdeposits - What's my liability

**polarisxtx** · 04-13-2007, 01:02 PM

This past Monday, I was a victim of credit card fraud. The criminal tried to purchase two HP laptops. The first was debited from my bank account via my stolen credit card account number, but the second laptop was never shipped and therefore never debited from my account. Since the fraud was discovered, HP has reversed the first debit from my bank account. However, my question stems from a second reversal completed.

HP deposited the amount of the second laptop that was never shipped or falsely charged to me.

What right does HP have to deposit money into my account when it was never authorized by me? I'm not actually upset, but I will be if I decide to spend it and this is "corrected" and I'm held liable months or years later. The deposit is NOT a bank error, it is a seller error. Because of that slight difference between payee I'm not sure where my liability ends and begins. I've seen in past threads that the account holder is 100% liable for erroneous BANK deposits, but what about third party erroneous deposits?

**aaron** · 04-13-2007, 01:56 PM

If the erroneous credit is charged out of your account as part of the correction of this error and you end up bouncing checks, expect to pay the bad check fees. It's not your money.

**Happy Trails** · 04-13-2007, 02:28 PM

Quoting polarisxtx

I've seen in past threads that the account holder is 100% liable for erroneous BANK deposits, but what about third party erroneous deposits?

I think you are confusing two separate issues....

The account holder can be held responsible if a deposit is made and the funds that were deposited were not any good.

This situation you are talking about is a mistake by HP and the right thing to do is notify them of the error.

As mentioned, the money is not yours and if they find the error you should expect that they will seek to have it corrected.