Consumer complaint received 2023-10-09
Company: WELLS FARGO & COMPANY
State: OR
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Problem caused by your funds being low
Sub-issue: Bounced checks or returned payments

Complaint:
The school that I used to attend, published a part time job opportunity from home. At first I was notified this was for orphanage and that I would have to purchase items and have them shipped out with the funds I was given. The person that contacted me went with the name of XXXX. After some investigation myself, the number they were using was a different person. They gave me a check of XXXX as well as a mobile check of XXXX to do the tasks as well as money to pay for the job. As soon as I started communicating with the person, they quickly changed the task into sending money instead which was through Bitcoin. I wasn't comfortable with using Bitcoin. They then wanted me to try to send money to people via XXXX which was not working. At that point I started to question myself that is some sort of fraud/scam and that they are committing fraud. They then, decided to do gift cards instead. I was told to purchase a variety of XXXX Gift cards, XXXX, and XXXX ones. I have purchased on XX/XX/XXXX the XXXX in XXXX gift cards that they required ( XXXX x XXXX ), the XXXX XXXX gift card and the last purchase the XXXX XXXX gift card, and one XXXX and one XXXX XXXX gift card. Each XXXX gift card also had a XXXX activation fee which the person agreed to cover the amount out of their pocket. At this point, they started to make me respond to them in an asap timing despite of personal things I had going on. I have sent them the gift card pictures and the receipts as proof of purchase for them. The total amount of gift cards that I have purchased using the funds I received was XXXX. Once I have completed this task, they quickly on XX/XX/XXXX reversed the checks which got returned back to them. This resulted in my own personal money being used for this fraud and scam. Not only did they scam me over XXXX they also did not pay me the XXXX a week as my salary that they claimed in my email. This resulted in my account being negative, as they reversed the checks that I was supposed to buy the gift cards which I did, yet they refused to give me my money back for the amount that I purchased in gift cards. They also kept telling me how this task was urgent and needed to be done asap. After they have done this action, I called my bank Wells Fargo to submit a claim that I was given funds to purchase gift cards, which I did but the person reversed and returned the checks. I did call the bank to submit a claim the same day XX/XX/XXXX this happened and they blocked and froze the checks as fictious. They then took a few days to process. After calling them on the 4th day they declined and closed my claim and told me it was my fault and that I should be careful despite I was being lied and lured into fraudulent purchases and scam. I told them that I wasn't aware this was a scam/fraud as it was approved by the school and was claimed for orphanage. They did not even contact me as they were supposed to. The person is now unreachable and I am not able to receive my personal money back that I had to spend out of my pocket. In the end, the person return and reversed the checks back to them, and stole my money with the gift card purchases.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation