Halifax Ghostbust After Trial Closed

After over a month of eagerly awaiting and nail biting, the case brought to Nottingham Crown Court on the 30th April earlier this year has finally come to a close. The case had all Chip and PIN holders everywhere listening and watching the updates of the story as the first UK case to question the strength of the bank's security measures unravelled.

Alain Job, the 40 year old football coach for Basildon Town Ladies Football Club, brought forward a lawsuit with Halifax Building Society challenging Chip & PIN security after claiming that £2,100 disappeared from his account. The hearing, held at Nottingham Crown Court on the 30th April, lasted a day, with Halifax building society claiming that Mr Job had used his real card at an ATM machine and inferring that Job was either trying to defraud the bank, or he was grossly negligent in handling his card and PIN. However, due to the complexity of the case heard by the judge, the verdict took over a month for the judge of the one-day trial to deliver.

The judge of the trial has ruled in favour of the high street bank, Halifax in the country's first ever phantom withdrawal lawsuit. The judge based his ruling on printouts from log files to show that Job's real card had been used for the transactions and that the machine had not defaulted to reading magnetic-stripe data.

The suit was filed after two critical piece of evidence once held by Halifax were destroyed, including the original ATM card and the Authorisation Request Cryptogram that could have proved that the card's Chip had been read and authenticated by the machine.

Mr Alain Job says that he is currently studying the judgement before deciding whether he wishes to appeal the ruling.