Released: August 31, 2008

The bank account that sprung a leak

Source: Diana B. Henriques, New York Times (Free Registration)

They are a staple of consumer-complaint hotlines and Web sites: anguished tales about money stolen electronically from bank accounts, about unhelpful bank tellers and, finally, about unreimbursed losses.

But surely customers of the elite private banking operation at JPMorgan Chase, serving only the bank’s wealthiest clients, are safe from such problems, right?

Wrong, says Guy Wyser-Pratte, an activist investor on Wall Street for more than 40 years who uses his hedge fund’s war chest of roughly $500 million to wage takeover fights and proxy battles in the United States and Europe.

In May, Mr. Wyser-Pratte learned that someone had siphoned nearly $300,000 from his personal account at the private bank through many small electronic transfers over a 15-month period.

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