Consumer complaint received 2022-09-08
Company: MOUNTAIN AMERICA FEDERAL CREDIT UNION
State: UT
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Domestic (US) money transfer
Issue: Fraud or scam

Complaint:
I was selling a table on XXXXXXXX XXXX  and the person buying used XXXX to pay me for the table. This happened XX/XX/2022. I checked my account and I hadnt received the money so i told the customer i hadnt received the money and they told me i had to download the app to see that it was pending/waiting to enter my mountain america credit union ( MACU ) account. i downloaded the XXXX app to try to figure this payment out with this woman. When i did not see the money she sent on the app i told her that, and she started getting angry and pushing me to refund her back her money. I was trying to be patient with the woman and felt bad that she had payed me for this table and I hadn't received it so now she was out {$150.00} USD. She emailed me from an email that looked like it had come from XXXX and the email stated that she had sent me {$150.00} on the XXXX app and that it was pending. All I had to do was upgrade my XXXX account to a business account then i would receive her payment. So i followed the instructions from the email i had received from XXXX to upgrade my account to a business account, and at the end it instructed me to load {$450.00} dollars onto the app where it would be sent to the woman, then once she received that my XXXX account would be credited my {$450.00} plus the {$150.00} for the table. The woman continued to pressure me to refund her her money back and I did not want to be reported for scamming anyone on XXXX XXXX XXXX  and lose the ability to sell on XXXXXXXX XXXX in the future. so i followed the instructions in the email and sent the {$450.00}. immediately after i sent the money i received another email telling me that i owed {$200.00} to go towards a tax for upgrading to a business account then i immediately realized it was a scam and contacted mountain america credit union. i told MACU I had been scammed on XXXX just a few minutes ago and they responded with that they are sorry but there is nothing they can do about that. They did not ask me questions to investigate how i got scammed nor attempted to start a report about the scam. They also told me that many people get scammed from XXXX. I was unhappy with their answer and asked why they ( MACU ) are partnering with a money transfer app that is not secure. I learned about the XXXX app through the MACU institution and they told me they can not help me with my problem nor can they do anything to help me get my money back. I called MACU 3 different times to try to get a hold of their dispute department and they refused to transfer me to the dispute department because they said they could not help me. I only got as far as talking to a customer representative all 3 times i called. I asked them about regulation E and wanting to file a regulation E dispute and they said that XXXX does not fall under that category because it is not considered an electronic transfer. that made no sense to me because i electronically transferred a woman money. All MACU told me is that XXXX is like a cash transaction and once the money is sent it is lost forever. Once again MACU did not take any steps to investigate this scam. I was hoping I could at least get them to investigate this scam and this woman that scammed me so that they could avoid this from happening to anyone else. MACU told me they do not have a department that would investigate a XXXX scam.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation