In the late 1970s, a deranged Brooklyn man started obeying the strict orders of a demon, who he believed had taken the form of his neighbor Sam’s dog, Harvey. The rest is bloody history, unfortunately, as David Berkowitz went on to kill six innocent people and injure another within a year, before finally being caught the NYPD and locked away forever.
Which, strangely, leads us to modern day San Francisco, where a United States bank — believe it or not — is acting eerily like the Son of Sam, in somehow believing that a man’s dog is either the manifestation or a direct link to ISIS (the Islamic State, IS, ISIL … Daesh).
Or, it could just be dyslexia or bad eyesight or a lack of reading glasses.
This from the Hindustan Times:
Bruce Francis, 55, from San Francisco, was transferring $374 from his account to his dog walker and wrote his dog’s name ‘Dash’ in the memo line, as he has done every month for the past couple of years.
Chase Bank blocked Francis’ online payment because his pitbull mix’s moniker loosely resembles the terrorist network ‘Daesh’, another name for Islamic State.
Bank officials thought ‘Dash’ was a hair too close to ‘Daesh’, the Arabic term for the Islamic State or IS, and cancelled the payment. The dog walker notified Francis ten days later that she still had not been paid.
“I called my bank, and they were kind of squirrely about why the payment didn’t go through,” Francis told the New York Daily News.
When he logged into his account, he realised the bank had flagged the transfer made earlier this month for review by the US Treasury Department, which posted a note on his account asking him to “explain what Dash means”.
“I said, ‘Oh, so that’s what this is about,’“ said Francis.
Francis then had to call the Office of Foreign Assets Control to explain his dog’s name, and that he relies on Dash immensely because he suffers from a rare form of muscular dystrophy. After this ordeal, the payment finally went through.
Thankfully, he was pretty light about the whole mixup, admitting that the thought that his dog was a terrorist was pretty amusing.
“Seriously, the only thing Dash could terrorize is a roast chicken,” he told reporters.
Chase Bank wasn’t that apologetic about it, saying that the safeguard was in place for a very good reason, implying that Francis not getting his money immediately was an easy price to pay.
“This is an important part of ensuring that crime does not filter through the U.S. banking system,” said the bank spokesperson.
If you think Dash is bad (which it’s not at all) just remember — Hillary Clinton once had a cat named “Isis”.