One of Canada’s famous banks has withdrawn about $3,000 from a customer’s account after he was tricked into an employment scam. The customer in question, Justin Smith, is a customer of one of Scotiabank’s subsidiary, Tangerine. A full statement where Justin narrated his ordeal showed the disadvantage of using cash for transfers overusing digital assets.

In a statement by authorities, Justin was said to have been a victim in the scam after he was coaxed into unknowingly depositing a forged check worth around $3,000. After Justin realized what was going on and alerted the bank, they used a clause in their Terms of Service and deducted the full money from another account that belonged to Justin.

The victim was given a fake check to deposit in an account

Justin’s nightmare began after he was contacted by the company in question, Sobeys, that he was successful in his interview and has been hired. The recruiters further told Justin, who thought he had finally gotten a data entry job that requires that he works from home to set up an elaborate scheme. After he was informed of his success in landing the job, Justin was now given a fake check of $3,495 with an instruction to pay $3,000 into the account of Tech Insight Service for them to supply equipment.

After Justin deposited the check at the bank, he was immediately credited as the bank was also gullible enough to believe that the check was a real one. After he was credited, Justin sent the $3,000 to the account that belonged to the hackers, partly unaware that he was being exploited.

It was not until he was paid another $3,500 that he finally pieced everything together in his head. After his suspicion, he went to the bank to inform them, but things had already gotten out of hand as the bank could not reverse the transfer he did.

Justin would still have his cash if he used digital assets

After the apparent scam, Tangerine told Justin that he would have to pay the full amount from the check from his other bank accounts, something that Justin refused. After his apparent refusal, the bank went into his account without his permission and removed the total money. This case is not the only problem associated with the culture of customer-bank relationship in financial institutions as things like this always happen all the time.

In Justin’s case, the bank was said to have triggered something known as Right of Setoff, a clause that allowed them to take the full amount from his bank accounts. The Right of Setoff is a clause which states that the funds that are deposited by customers are owned by the bank, which makes the customer a creditor.

If a customer owes the bank any money, the bank has the right to deduct the money from any of his account that has cash in it. This Right of Setoff is something that shows how customer privacy is not regarded in financial institutions, something that is not in the crypto industry. If the case were to be via crypto, then Justin’s funds will be safe as he will be the only one in charge of the private keys to his wallet.