The National Australia Bank has been held liable to pick up the tab, in effect, for the gambling losses run up by the wife of one of its customers after a NSW Supreme Court Judge agreed he had taken reasonable steps to prevent her accessing his bank accounts. In a recent decision by the NSW Supreme Court, Justice Davies was asked to consider the roles of various components of the keycard and phone banking systems at NAB, and along the way he developed guidance on what constitutes reasonable efforts to keep PINs secret.NAB argued that their customer, Joul Swed, had either acted with "extreme carelessness" in failing to protect his PIN and telephone banking password, or had voluntarily disclosed the details to his wife.  Swed countered that NAB had wrongly debited amounts other than mandated payments. The disputed transactions occurred between March 2008 and December 2009.At issue was whether any or all of the transactions were authorised, and whether husband complied with Banking Electronic Funds Transfer Code of Conduct and with his bank's terms and conditions.The trouble began when Swed, who was not confident of his spoken English despite living in Australia for many years, asked his wife to help him with phone banking.Mrs Swed was a gambling addict and, after a previous binge some years earlier, her husband had advised the bank not to allow her access to the account at all. Although Swed took care to shield his bank details from her, Mrs Swed was able to retrieve the important PIN and National Identification Number details from the phone after he had finished. She also admitted in court to being able to sneak a glimpse of his PIN when he withdrew cash, even though he made her stand more than a metre away.Using this information, Mrs Swed was able to sneak Mr Swed's keycard out of his wallet at night while he slept and transfer small amounts from their home loan account.Over a period of many months, she diverted more than $50,000 away from paying off the family home and used the money to play poker machines.She was always home in time to intercept  - and burn - any letters confirming the withdrawals.The court agreed that Mr Swed had taken sufficient care to prevent unauthorised access of the account and the illegally made  transfers were cancelled, along with the danger of losing the family home.