RIP-OFF ALERT: A well-respected bank with a huge national presence has been involved in a criminal enterprise. There were little inklings of this last year, but now The New York Times has released internal Wachovia memos that show the company aided and abetted criminal rings in stealing from people's checking accounts. In the interest of full disclosure, Clark wants you to know that he owns stock in Wachovia. It's one of the few non-index or mutual fund choices he has in his portfolio. As a stockholder, he's embarrassed and outraged by this news. Worse still is the fact that federal banking regulators are sleeping on the job -- they first discovered this scam 3 years ago.

Criminals know how easy it is to present a draft against an account and steal the money. The banking industry has no security against such drafts. So criminal rings were drafting people's accounts and hoping the customers wouldn't notice. There are systems in place where if too many disputes arise, it triggers a probationary hold or the loss of drafting privileges. But Wachovia kept allowing the drafts even after the alarms went off. Internal memos show employees knew they were dealing with criminal activity in 500,000 cases -- but the fee income was too large for them to care.

Wachovia has issued a statement saying they've now resolved the issue. It's great if that's true. But this scam has been going on at 9 banks and Wachovia was the only one named. Consumers Union has already detailed the cozy relationship between bank regulators and banks; regulators see themselves as protecting the banks! So here's what you need to do: Check your bank and credit card statements every month, line by line. If there's a charge you don't recognize, question it.