Consumer complaint received 2020-08-25
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: CA
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Domestic (US) money transfer
Issue: Fraud or scam

Complaint:
I have a checking account with Bank of America for years. I was frauded by a company called on XX/XX/XXXX pretending to be XXXX XXXX XXXX and asking for payment before they shut down my services in XXXX minutes. They seemed to have information about my XXXX XXXX XXXX as I haven't been making payments for the past few months of shutdown due to hardship but haven't also received any mail notices. 

They asked me to make a transfer from my account at Bank Of America with a feature called XXXX which they can receive their payment so that they would stop shutting down my services. They took two different payments of {$190.00}, and then another for {$490.00} as that was the full amount they were looking for and not the partial payment of {$190.00} I tried to pay first. They told me they will issue a refund on the {$190.00} they couldn't accept and needed full payment of {$490.00}. Once they collected the full amount, they said they have systems issues and have to wait till Monday XX/XX/XXXX to issue refund. I called them and all their voice messaging systems were excatly as XXXX & XXXX and trusted that this was XXXX & XXXX. But when I tried to call them on XX/XX/XXXX, I realized that there was something wrong as they wouldn't want to issue a refund. 

I checked back and found other 800 numbers for XXXX & XXXX and they told me that they haven't received any payments and realized I was frauded. I called Bank of America to report this fraud transaction and they started the claim but they wouldn't issue a refund back to me stating that this was my responsiblity to transfer cash to this party. They admitted that they have recent fraud transactions with XXXX but kept indicating that they have notified part of setup that it should be used for only freinds and family but this is not consistent with all the big content they have within the process flow when entering the amount to transfer and indicating this is a safe and secure transactions. I called them back again and they said the other party Bank was XXXX and they will need to ask for persmission from their part who received the money to issue a refund. In the meantime, FTC has caught these people on XX/XX/XXXX and put a message when calling this number at XXXX that this number is a fraud and scam and to report to your financial bank for protection of transactions. 

Bank Of America is not offering to return my money back as of now and they are indicating that if the other bank and people who got the money has no fund, I won't be receiving my money. This is unacceptable by Bank of America and XXXX not to place any types of pretection against these kind of scan and fraud and if it wasn't for this feature of XXXX within their system I wouldn't be that easily trusted that I was protected with this transaction. They should remove this XXXX immediately and return my money back. You need to file a class action law suite against BoA and XXXX for having such money transfer features with no consumer protections against scam and being frauded. 

Please try to resolve this asap.

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