Consumer complaint received 2022-09-13
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: NY
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Traveler's check or cashier's check
Issue: Problem with customer service

Complaint:
Bank of America has closed my account & is wrongfully holding my funds. According to them ( risk closure department ) they need to verify the source of my funds & the transaction, so they froze my funds & stated this process is in the deposit account agreement. They sent me a letter saying At this time, any remaining balance won't be returned to you. As permitted under our Deposit agreement, we've frozen the funds while we review the transactions and validate the source of funds. 
The funds will not be returned to you if one of the following occurs : We determine the funds aren't due to you. 
We receive a XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX requiring us to turn over the funds to a third party. 
A third party indemnifies us for returning the funds to such third party. 
The ownership of the funds is disputed. Naturally I checked the frozen fund section of this deposit account agreement & according to the section that they are basically referring to it states If at any time we believe that your account may be subject to irregular, unauthorized, fraudulent or illegal activity, we may, in our discretion, freeze some or all of the funds in the account and in other accounts you maintain with us, and/or delay transactions, without any liability to you, until such time as we are able to complete our investigation of the account and transactions. If we do freeze your account funds or delay transactions, we will provide notice to you as soon as reasonably possible. which means Bank of America only should be questioning funds if the account was believed to be fraud, unauthorized or irregular. Lets keep in mind my account was never suspected for any fraud nor irregular activity, my account was closed due to a business decision. So the first question would be why are yall inquiring about the source of my funds if yall dont suspect my account of any fraud?. According to Bank of America deposit account agreement under the account ownership ( some general terms ) section it states When we accept a deposit to an account or permit a withdrawal or payment from an account, we may rely upon the form of the account and the terms of this Agreement at the time we process the transaction. We do not have to inquire about the source or ownership of any funds we receive for deposit or about the application of any withdrawal or payment from an account. So again the question would be why are yall holding & inquiring about the source of my funds if the deposit account agreement state that the bank themselves doesnt need to inquire nor ask about the source or ownership of funds they receive for deposit? Considering my account was never suspected or reported for any fraud or irregular activity, why are yall reviewing my funds? Because according to the deposit account agreement it seems, if my account isnt reported or suspected for any fraudulent, unauthorized or irregular activity then the source of my funds & the ownership of my funds shouldnt be inquired about. This process of holding my funds doesnt seem like its a standard process, it seems that my funds are being held due to a personal reason & I feel like they are holding my funds because of my age, they dont need to be holding my funds, according to the deposit account agreement Bank of America doesnt have to inquire about the source or ownership of funds they receive for deposit so why are yall sending me letters telling me yall need to validate the source of my funds & verify my transactions? Considering my account wasnt suspected of anything, why are yall holding my funds? Considering Bank of America doesnt have to inquire about the ownership or source of any funds, why are yall holding my funds?. If yall dont suspect me of anything then my funds shouldnt be held in the first place no matter what, especially after account closure. This is why I feel like my funds are being wrongfully held. When I bring this situation up with the department thats handling my account they get stuck & have nothing else to say & just keep on repeating we dont have any updated information on our system from the back office so we cant provide any information, all we do is just report to customers what the system information provides us & if we dont have any new information from the system then we cant really say or give any information, so you would have to wait till the back office gives us an update by updating the system & this can take as long as they want. So now this makes me feel like my funds was sent over for no reason because how does the department that was handling my funds have no information about my funds? Even when I let them know my funds are being wrongfully held they completely ignore me & basically imply that they do not care about what the customers are going through. Again I feel like this process isnt a standard process based on the deposit account agreement because the section they referred me to doesnt even apply to me another thing is they say they need to verify the source funds Why? If the source of funds was already verified once yall sent micro deposits & subtracted them from the same source of funds you guys can not so call verify, then proceeded to take the funds from the source that has been verified & deposit it into my Bank of America account. Its like a check, you can not cash a check until the bank verify the source of funds, Bank of America already verified the source of my ach transfer which is why they was able to fund the account. During this whole process they never contacted the issuing bank where the money came from. Why is that? Because the source of funds has already been systematically verified & How are yall going to verify the source of a cash deposit? This shows that this process is being ignorantly done & doesnt seem like a standard process, because everybody knows once a cash deposit is deposited into someones account, then its automatically theirs so I dont understand them holding onto my cash deposit funds. Lets keep in mind these 2 deposits were already collected & the status of the transaction was posted as cleared. Bank of America System has already verified my funds. So why is Bank of America inquiring about the source of my funds?. Secondly, they say they cant determine the funds are mine so they sent it for further review - how? If Im the one who deposited my funds? How if the transfer for {$5400.00} has my name in the transaction description? If my name is in the transaction description that should say everything. How can yall not determine the funds arent mine if yall never contact the issuing bank?. How can yall not determine the funds are mine if The transfer is preauthorized meaning it was scheduled to be deposited into my account, i know this process is going based off of personal feeling & not the account agreement because How are yall going to say my cash deposit isnt mine if Im the one who deposit the cash its automatically payable to me because its cash deposited in my bank account with my name. Thats ignorant & should already show that their holding my money for no reason & lastly, They say they need to verify the transaction, why do yall need to verify anything? Usually Bank of America doesnt have to inquire about the source or ownership of funds they receive for deposit unless the suspect the account as fraud, if my account isnt suspected for anything why are yall investigating the transactions? According to the deposit account agreement on the frozen funds section it says this will be a normal process if the bank suspects you of anything but again considering Im not suspected of anything, why are my funds frozen being held for review?. This whole process seems personally motivated & does not seem like the standard process. I mean they are investigating my funds when my account wasnt reported nor suspected as fraud & according to the deposit account agreement this is supposed to happen if my account was suspected as fraud. Now considering my account wasnt suspected as fraud what gives them the right to hold my funds & further investigate it?. 
They keep referring me to the deposit account agreement but the only part of this deposit account agreement that should apply to me is the account closure section & its the part where it states after account closure we mail the funds in the form of a check. If my account wasnt suspected of anything their is no legal right for yall to be holding & investigating my funds as if its connected to some type of fraud, I know they are lying about saying they cant verify the source of the funds because the system has already verified the source of the funds, hence to why yall were able to debit the funds from my other account & credit it to my new account, I know their lying when they say they cant determine the funds are payable to me, because how is that true if In the transaction description it says my name in it & when a transaction description has someone name in it that should show who money it is. If they were really verifying the transaction before my account was closed they wouldve noticed that but instead they didnt do any of that. They system had already verified the source of funds & who its payable to so why are yall further withholding my funds? I still can not get an answer to that. Why? Because they know either way they look at it holding my funds is completely wrong in this situation. Bank of America is basically stealing my money & using the excuse were further reviewing the transaction & verifying the source of funds because of my age, they minding my business by holding my funds lying saying that they are verifying it knowing my funds were already verified & very clear that it was made payable to me. They can not even tell me the reason why my funds was sent for further review. Which is because they dont need to be reviewing anything or further investigating anything if Im not suspected of anything & again in the deposit account agreement it states that bank of America dont have to inquire about the source or ownership of funds we receive for deposit, so why are yall trying to hold my funds & verify the source of my funds?. I have a bank statement that proves Bank of America sent me a micro deposit ( to verify the source of funds ) & removed that micro deposit, also it shows Bank of America successfully withdrawing {$5400.00} from my card XXXX  by XXXX account, I also have the receipt of the atm deposit I made. So considering I have these documents, it should be enough to prove those funds are minds & is payable to me, but because Bank of America already knows this, they declined my documents saying they dont need anything from me. This situation has gotten so bad because Bank of America even went as far to tell me to have my bank Card XXXX  by XXXX former recall the funds so that I could get my money back faster knowing that former recalls are only for transfer that had an error & of course my bank declined this because Bank of America successfully collected & deposited the funds into my Bank of America account ending in XXXX. So the fact they wanted me to lie to my bank & act like an error occurred just shows that they are doing something wrong & I know it. I want my money back. Its no reason for Bank of America to be holding my funds, its very obvious the funds are payable to me, so the fact they are holding my funds show that this process is a process being based off an personal opinion & not the deposit account agreement. I want some type of enforcement put on this department. I want my money back. I feel like this whole process is based off discrimination. I feel discriminated against. This whole process doesnt make sense & they fail to provide me answers.

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 monetary relief