PNC/National City cards hit with fraud in Cincinnati area

CINCINNATI - NewsChannel5's sister station WCPO has learned of an apparent data breach affecting some former customers of National City Bank, now with PNC in the Cincinnati area.

More than 100 customers have said they have found fraudulent charges on their debit cards.

Unexpected Withdrawals

Sandra Sanders is one of thousands of former National City customers now banking with PNC. She said the transition was going fine until this week, when she discovered two unexpected withdrawals on her old debit card.

She said "my husband was checking our account and found two unauthorized $25 debits to the March of Dimes."

Sandra said when they called the March of Dimes, she learned the money had not really gone to charity. She said "March of Dimes has confirmed they are not getting any of this, so they feel it's a scam, and we do, too, because we didn't authorize it."

Some charged more than $1,000

Other customers were hit harder.

• Cynthia Suchoski emailed to say "there was a charge made yesterday at Macy's in Costa Mes, California for $1,300" on her old National City debit card. She was not in California.
•  And another, who asked that we not use his name, emailed to say his PNC account "is more than $1,000 overdrawn," again, after unauthorized charges in california.
• A fourth viewer reported another series of unauthorized charges, supposedly from March of Dimes.

Fred Solomon of PNC bank in Pittsburgh said he believes the breach is confined primarily to the Cincinnati area, as that is where they are getting most of their complaints. He feels only a few customers elsewhere in Ohio were affected.

He said the data breach had nothing to do with the PNC takeover. The company believes the account numbers were stolen in 2008 or 2009 from National City, but that the thieves only began using them the past couple of weeks.

"We will work with individual customers to address their concerns. No PNC customer will pay in a case of proven fraud."

What You Can Do

PNC said anyone who notices any problem with their account should call their customer service number immediately.

That also means you should check your balance as soon as possible, and every day for the next few days just to be safe.