Dog owner's ordeal after his dog 'Dash' is mistaken for Daesh, aka ISIS

A dog whose name sounds very much like a term for the militant group Isis, was put on the U.S. government's radar. That's after a bank flagged his owner's cheque for terrorist connections.

This is a good plan if your plan is to catch the world's stupidest terrorist.- Bruce Francis

"My dog's name is Dash," Bruce Francis tells As It Happens host Carol Off—not to be confused with Daesh, another name for ISIS.

"He's my service dog, he's very, very, very sweet and playful and loving but that's not what Chase Bank and the treasury department thought," says Francis.

Francis, who suffers from a rare form of muscular dystrophy, wrote a cheque to his dog walker and put Dash's name in the memo line. When the cheque didn't go through, he inquired to see what the problem was.

"The bank said 'please explain what the memo for Dash actually means.'"

The bank had flagged his cheque to the U.S. Treasury department and they confirmed what Francis suspected, "They said, you've got it right, your dog's name sounds like an international terrorist organization, and that's why we stopped the cheque."

"Dash has no links with terrorism," Francis confirms.

He is quick to note that he doesn't mind the minor inconvenience and he thinks banks should be vigilant about stopping money to terrorist organizations,

"The international funding of terrorism is a serious thing and I think we should look seriously at ways to shut that down, but I was amused that my dog and my dog-walker were under suspicion."

Francis also suggests banks re-examine their criteria for flagging cheques to the treasury, "This is a good plan if your plan is to catch the world's stupidest terrorist."