Consumer complaint received 2019-01-04
Company: WELLS FARGO & COMPANY
State: FL
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Traveler's check or cashier's check
Issue: Fraud or scam

Complaint:
On XX/XX/XXXX, I deposited a XXXX XXXX XXXX  cashiers check for XXXX into my personal checking account at Wells Fargo. This check was coming from a company ( XXXX ) that had given me an job offer letter to be a remote employee for them starting XX/XX/XXXX. The check was for teleconferencing equipment to set-up my home office. As they explained, I needed to use that XXXX to pay several merchants and the IT person at XXXX in charge of setting up the equipment. 

When I cashed the cashiers check, I was informed by the teller at Wells Fargo that funds would be available the next day. On Tuesday, XX/XX/XXXX, I accessed my Wells Fargo account online, and my account showed that the funds had indeed been deposited on my account and the money was available. When I saw that the money had entered my account, I assumed that Wells Fargo had properly verified and cleared this cashiers check before making the funds available on my account. For this reason, I went ahead and initiated transactions to paid the merchants and the IT person as instructed by my new employer. The transactions totaled XXXX. Even though it seemed a little strange to me that the process to pay for the equipment was so convoluted, I did not think at the time this was a scam because they had given me the money, and that deposit had been cleared by Wells Fargo and deposited on my account. In addition, the final transaction, a wire, was made at a Wells Fargo branch. I told the banker that initiated the wire the objective of the transaction and the origin of those funds. Why did this person not warn me about this transaction if he should know that the cashiers check could be fraudulent and still needed to clear? On XX/XX/XXXX at XXXX XXXX, ( Two days after I started those transfers ) I got a message from Wells Fargo stating that the cashiers check had " bounced '' and that my account now had a negative balance because the XXXX deposit from XX/XX/XXXX had been reversed. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, as soon as I saw Wells Fargos message about the cashiers check bouncing, I immediately started a fraud complain with Wells Fargo, but they are telling me that if the funds can't be recovered it will be my loss, not their loss. I do not understand why Wells Fargo is making me responsible for a fraudulent cashiers check if they were the ones that failed to perform proper due diligence on those funds before depositing the money on my account. If Wells Fargo takes 4 days to clear a cashiers check, then they should only deposit that money on my account after 4 days, when they have verified those funds. As a consumer, I should not be responsible for knowing that a cashiers check can " bounce '' after the money has been deposited on my account after several days. Isn't a cashiers check supposed to be " guaranteed funds ''? and if wells Fargo took that cashiers check and made the money available on my account, why would I doubt the validity of that check. Also, Wells Fargo failed to inform me that it could take up to 4 days for the cashier check to clear. If I had known that and I saw that the money was " pending '', then I would not had initiated those transactions for those vendors until cleared. I need Wells Fargo to make me whole in this XXXX deposit since they are the ones that failed to perform proper due diligence on the proceeds of those funds and failed to provide proper warnings on their process to clear those funds.

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