Consumer complaint received 2022-08-29
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: MO
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Problem with a lender or other company charging your account
Sub-issue: Transaction was not authorized

Complaint:
On XX/XX/2022 at XXXX I was messaged via text of an alert from Bank of America stating : Bank Of America : Did you attempt a {$3500.00} XXXX QuickPay -Reply YES or NO/HELP. Don't want fraud text Reply Remove. 

My response : No No/help Within seconds of me sending my response I received a phone call from - XXXX XXXX and someone named XXXX XXXX XXXX employee ID XXXX, claiming to be from Bank of America Fraud department had alerted me that someone named XXXX XXXX XXXX remember her name ) from XXXX XXXX XXXX was attempting to XXXX themselves {$3500.00} from my account. He then told me he was going to walk me through the steps to cancel the payment, he told me he was going send me another text with a case number and reference verification code needed to stop payment. Text below : Your Verification Code - Bank of America Cancelation with XXXX Your Reference Verification Code is : XXXX Case number : XXXX Please use this code to verify the email address added to your Bank of America QuickPay with XXXX profile. 
Don't share any codes during this cancellation with anyone. You can only use the code for this specific email address. 
If you believe this message was sent in error, please contact us immediately at XXXX ( XXXX ) Please don't reply to this automatically generated message From there he walked me through the steps of reseting my recipient in my XXXX account and used the verification code. He was stating that in order to cancel out the previous charge I was going to have to send myself a payment of {$3500.00} and that the {$3500.00} would be credited back to the account XXXX hours later. While in the process of doing that he said that there were XXXX more attempts from this person in XXXX, XXXX for {$3500.00} and the second for {$7000.00} and we were going to have to do the same steps to cancel out the attempted charges. He said once those were completed he would be able to freeze the account so no more attempts could be made. 

The next morning XX/XX/2022, I looked at my bank account exactly XXXX hours later from the XXXX transactions and noticed that the money had not been credited back to the account. I then called Bank of America and spoke to XXXX, an employee from XXXX and told her about what happened and she notified me that I had been scammed for {$14000.00} and she would assist me with starting a claim ( claim # XXXX ). 

On XX/XX/2022 I received and letter in the mail from Bank of America notifying me that they completed a review of my claim and their records indicate that the completed transfers according to the instructions I provided them that no error had occurred. But as a courtesy they were researching my inquiry with the other party ( XXXX Bank ) in an attempt to recover funds and they will notify me if they need any additional information and would take up to XXXX days to complete. 

On XX/XX/2022 I received another letter from Bank of America notifying me they were unable to approve my claim. They said they made their decision because - they confirmed that these transfers posted to the account I requested and they recommend I contact the person I sent the funds to directly for further assistance. Since they completed the transfers according to the instructions I provided them, no error occurred. Based on this, my account was not credited. 

Bank of America would not let me keep the claim open for further investigation, and stating that it was up to me to contact the scammer. I then attempted to contact the scammer but the number that was used was not a working number. I have also submitted a complaint on XXXX about this situation.

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