Forget about identity thieves. If the experience of the wife of one of Portland's leading consumer advocates provides any lesson, it's that institutions such as Portland General Electric and Washington Mutual can pose a far more insidious threat to your finances.

The story starts on April Fool's day, when Jill Stear discovered that $465 had been taken from her Washington Mutual checking account without authorization. After doing some digging--and accumulating $132 in bounced-check charges--Stear determined that this was no joke. The money had been paid to PGE.

That didn't make much sense, Stear told Washington Mutual, because her monthly bill is usually about $60 or $70. More important, she pays by check, not automatic transfer. Over the course of several visits to her Washington Mutual branch, Stear provided documentation showing that she had neither signed a check nor authorized the withdrawal. Still, the best the bank could do was giving her a temporary credit of the bounced check fee. The missing $465 was her problem.

PGE was even less helpful. Six weeks after the money was taken from Stear's account, her husband, Bob Jenks--who birddogs local utilities as executive director of the state Citizens' Utility Board--called PGE to ask for a refund.

Jenks, who says he did not identify himself as a CUB official, was referred to the company that handles auto-payments for PGE. That company referred Jenks back to Washington Mutual.

"If any one of these three companies had been willing to spend half an hour to get to the bottom of this, it could have been solved weeks ago," Jenks says.

Finally, on May 13, Washington Mutual agreed to refund the money--42 days after it disappeared. Jenks says he and his wife have learned some painful lessons. "Your money in the bank just isn't as secure as you think it is," Jenks says. "Your check can be cashed with no signatures, and if a clerical error takes hundreds of dollars out of your account, it's your responsibility to get it back."