Consumer complaint received 2018-04-13
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: CA
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Getting a credit card
Sub-issue: Card opened as result of identity theft or fraud

Complaint:
Between approximately XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/2018 Citibank allowed a credit card account to be fraudulently opened in my name and the name of another person ( liked to the same account ) within days, sending the new cards to my mail address. This was combined with an attempt to steal my mail by the thief watching and noticing I was not home, putting a hold on my mail at the post office during that time and then trying to pick up my mail at the post office to pick up the new, bogus credit cards - a coordinated scam between online fraud and postal theft/fraud. The person was not able to get a hold of my mail when I went to the mailbox and then post-office, retrieved my mail and averted the theft. The Citibank credit cards had an {$11000.00}. The thief opened another card with another company, so the overall amount was for {$19000.00} of credit. A third attempt was met with more scrutiny by a third financial institution. 

Issue 1 - My issues with Citi start with that when I alerted them, they were not supportive of my efforts to immediately close down the account. I talked to a fraud contact at the bank on XX/XX/XXXX, and did not want to give him my SS # but understood the account would be closed. I then went to my credit bureau to put a fraud alert on my account. On XX/XX/XXXX, Citi contacted me about the account but the person contacting me had no information and the account was not yet closed or of the incident reported on XX/XX/XXXX. She was helpful in closing it down and I asked to be transferred to someone who could help identify the causes of this fraud. 

Issue 2 - Even though I was the one that alerted them, the identity theft division of Citi was generally not that supportive and would not help me find information that could help our local police apprehend the local person committing both the online and mail crime. She would not give me any information about my application and said if they police wanted the information, they could call a Citi 800 number and ask for the law enforcement liason - not exactly helpful or responsive to a crime committed using their credit card process. She gave me ambiguous advice about the length of my fraud alert and in general, seemed annoyed that I was asking for help and explanations, when it was Citi that at least played a part in issuing a bogus credit card in my name. When I asked her how I could communicate my concerns and request for deeper explanations as to how this happened, she reluctantly gave me a po box to write a physical letter to a generic customer service contact. The overall impression is that Citibank 's actual conduct does not match their web site-published concern for customers impacted by credit card fraud. I want to make sure that this particular scam is not allowed to continue, and I mistakenly thought they would share this desire.

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 non-monetary relief