There are many ways that a debit can clear an account, and stop pays are not valid for all of them. I used to work at a very large credit union and saw this stuff every day. Heres another thing to think about, a large portion of the unauthorized forms that I dealt with were in and of themselves fraudulent. People sign a contract or do something without reading fine print and then throw a fit when the company tries to take money that the person agreed to pay. It is not as cut and dry you would like to think. One more point, some debits are pre-authorized and by law must be payed by an institution, stop payment or not.