Vikki Campion: AI robbed me of thousands of dollars and no one cared

Vikki Campion was under the impression that someone could not, without her knowledge, take money out of her bank account and put it in their own without notification, justification, or explanation. How wrong she was.

If you took thousands of dollars from a bank account that wasn’t yours you would go to jail for up to 15 years, but apparently, if the bank does it that’s AI justice.

There is a photo of someone speeding in a car I no longer owned, in a state I wasn’t in — but later, thousands of dollars were taken from my account to pay for it. 

And who do you turn to when the people taking the money are the people you normally go to, to tell them money has been taken — and the other institution is supposed to stop your money from being stolen?

Piece by piece, citizens are losing individual rights, where computers have more power than you.

I thought if you put money in the bank, someone cannot, without your knowledge, arbitrarily take it out and put it in theirs with no notification, justification, or explanation.

3D image concept of software (Robot Trading System) used in the stock market that automatically submits trades to an exchange without any human interventions. A robot hand counting money in graph form on the rise. Depth of field with focus on the gold coin on the fingers.

It’s easy to disregard people stashing money under their beds as conspiracy theorists, but they may have a point.

Over the past year, I have spent around two weeks fighting bureaucracy in another state to disabuse them of the notion that I had taken what would have been the most expensive car trip of my life — had I actually ever taken it.

Almost exactly a year ago, I walked into my local dealership in northern NSW and traded in my car — only to discover months later that thousands of dollars in police fines 1500km away had been incurred, with the warnings left at my neighbour’s mailbox back in NSW.

I had to prove that I hadn’t somehow teleported to Adelaide to go hooning and got back in time to do the afternoon school pick-up.

When I gave SA Police transfer documents from the dealership, they asked me who bought it.

They have yet to call the dealer. Do any of us know who buys their trade-in? Is that a responsibility of ours?

Vikki Campion and her two young sons Sebastian and Thomas. Picture: Brad Hunter

When I thought the matter was dealt with, my neighbour got more mail from SA Fines, still never sent to me at the address given to police, or to the email the police used.

Late last year, I received an exoneration for the actions I never took.

Then, on the anniversary of selling my car, I discover thousands of dollars are missing from my bank account. I’m on the kind of income where you notice that.

It’s not policy, the Commonwealth Bank told me repeatedly, to warn customers that another state had sent a legal order to garnish their account or to provide any details of it.

That’s comforting.

When I asked the bank if I could forward it the official exoneration from the police, I was told it couldn’t accept emails because it was a security risk.

Before it took my money, it never asked me how much I owed preschool, daycare or local businesses. The bank didn’t care if the carers were paid, as long as the bureaucracy in South Australia was covered for fines I had been cleared of because I was never there.

SA Police blamed SA Fines, who blamed SA Police, and the Commonwealth Bank blamed SA Fines, who said they would return my money after the police informed them I had been exonerated on February 19 — three months after the police informed me I had been exonerated.

While SA Fines swiped my money immediately, getting it back comes at their convenience, with empathetic clerks reading the talking points that they understand my loss, apologise for hardship, ask about my kids, but can’t tell me when the thousands of dollars will be back in the account I thought was safe.

What world do we live in where a bank decides what account you are going to pay?

It is a serious offence to slip your demerit points to another person who wasn’t driving the car if you, the human, do it, but it’s acceptable for a computer in Adelaide and a computer in Sydney to decide.

The brave new world of justice by artificial intelligence.

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