A B.C. company is suing an alleged recipient to get repaid for e-transfers that it claims went to the wrong account because of an "inadvertent transcription error."
Bandstra Transportation Systems Ltd. is suing Sterling Immigration Services Inc., which does business as Overseas Immigration, as well as its owner, Kuldeep Kumar Bansal, for $58,550 plus interest as well as an accounting of transactions involving all payments into and out of the defendants' bank account.
Bandstra claims in its Oct. 3 notice of civil claim filed in BC Supreme Court that someone connected with the company made a mistake when inputting data for one contractor into accounting software. The result was that Bandstra e-transferred "more than 35 payments" to the defendants' bank account, when that was not the account to which the payments were intended..
In August, the contractor that was owed money by Bandstra alerted its executives that it had not been paid.
Bandstra representatives then contacted the Toronto-Dominion Bank (TSX:TD).
"TD was able to reverse some but not all of the mistaken payments made to the defendants' account," Bandstra alleges in its lawsuit. "35 of the mistaken payments have not been returned."
None of the allegations in the lawsuit have been proven in court and no response to the notice of civil claim has yet been filed.
BIV yesterday left a message with a receptionist at Overseas Immigration for a comment from Bansal. So far, there has been no response.
Bandstra alleges that on Sept. 20 it obtained a Norwich order to determine the owners of the bank account to which the wrongful payments were made.
Norwich orders are a legal mechanism to compel third parties to provide documents and information to potential plaintiffs so the applicant can decide whether to start a lawsuit. This remedy is available where the applicant believes it has been wronged and it needs the third party's assistance to determine how to pursue its legal remedies.
"Bandstra was able to obtain evidence that the defendants' account belongs to the defendants and that the mistaken payments were made to the defendants' account," the company alleged.