Consumer complaint received 2023-06-27
Company: Chime Financial Inc
State: WI
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Managing an account
Sub-issue: Deposits and withdrawals

Complaint:
My chime account was strictly used to receive payments that I was eligible for during the pandemic. I never went into it for anything unless absolutely necessary, as it was for emergencies only. A few weeks ago There were weird emails I started receiving regarding my chime account notifying me of my debit pin, email being changed as well as a login being made in Virginia ( Have never been there before ). So I began looking through all of my emails regarding chime and I discovered that this stems back to a few years ago when I began receiving covid payments. Now I noticed money being taken out of my account, but it was so much that I wasn't even sure that I would be able to do a regular dispute or even get my money back at all. SO i filed a police report as well as a complaint/report with the FBI and FTC. I was told to attempt to dispute all of the money that was stolen from me and my children before escalating it with the law. So I disputed the transactions about 30 minutes ago and I am now providing the necessary information as well as documents to help resolve the situation in the best way possible. I have never linked a chime debit card with my apple wallet and I found an email notifying me of a card being added to apple pay around the same time as my account pin and email being changed behind my back. A complete stranger 's apple wallet was being loaded using my account 's chime debit card that I never even had in my possession. I have spent almost 2 years trying to recover from this and my local police department barely even attempted to help me recover my stolen money. I have been in contact with a lawyer regarding the issue if there is any more trouble recovering what was stolen from me. Chime has been an amazing bank to me for years outside of this so I really hope the information as well as documents I provide in this email are helpful enough to resolve this issue and end the nightmare my family and I have been put through as a result of thieves taking everything I ever had in this account. More information worth noting is the frequency of these fraudulent transactions being made on my account. For the most part, they were always spread apart by at least a few days to prevent any alerts being made to me. I have done thorough research regarding cyber crime and learned a lot about how these things go down under the noses of victims like myself. My email has been subscribed to spam letters that I have failed to get around to cancelling for quite some time now. These emails would vary from loan offers to job posts. None of which I have ever volunteered to receive. This is known formally as " email bombing '' which is used in order to stop victims like myself from noticing emails from banks and such that would prevent the thief from pulling off the scam. I also learned about " sim swapping '' which is used to swap numbers with the victim. This was used by the thief to verify using the sms code sent to my phone. I never once received these messages even though that is the necessary way to get into my account. I am also going to attach all of the past reports and complaints I have filed regarding this issue on top of the most recent and informational reports I have made if that is fine with you guys. I made sure to put as much detail as possible in this email as well as the files I provided below. If there are any questions you guys have please do not hesitate to email me as soon as possible. I will provide whatever is needed for this issue to be resolved as it has been a struggle to provide for my kids as well as my mother who is unable to work.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation