Thanks for the welcome, everybody! I've been an occasional "lurker" for a while.
With regards to the woman I represented, the bank had to play CYA because they had inadvertently given my client all of the account information linked to the other customer with the same name shortly before the error was noticed by the person who actually owned the money. They promptly credited the correct person's account, making them whole again. Not sure what they did about the account info, though.
At any rate, once it became clear to the District Attorney that Bank of America had already written this debt off, and it was really a drop in the bucket for them, they lost interest in attempting to persuade a jury that my client "must have known" the money wasn't hers, even though she questioned it. The judge was slightly horrified because he used the same bank. He might not anymore, though!
BTW, my client was an extemely nice, hard working Jamiacan woman, who cleans motel rooms for a living, and had no criminal record of any sort. When I was first appointed to her I went to the lockup at the courthouse and there was this petite, well-dressed, scared woman huddled in the corner of a dingy cell. I think a jury would have "liked" her if it came down to a trial. Her main concern was that her work visa not be taken away by immigration authorities, frankly, once she realized she probably wasn't going to jail. Apparently it's not so easy to make a living in Jamaica.
Anyway, these types of mistakes by banks are apparently not so uncommon, given the large number of transactions they handle on any given day.