Consumer complaint received 2018-07-31
Company: AMERICAN EXPRESS COMPANY
State: NY
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports
Sub-product: Credit reporting
Issue: Problem with a credit reporting company's investigation into an existing problem
Sub-issue: Their investigation did not fix an error on your report

Complaint:
We are following up on a previously submitted complaint ( XXXX ), which has been now closed without any proper solution. 

After one year of notifying American Express about an identity theft, supported by an affidavit and police report, which resulted in an unauthorized funding to my business, the company finally broke silence only a few weeks ago when we submitted an online complaint ( XXXX ) to CFPB despite our countless requests for updates on the investigation. Their final decision was to disregard our fraud claim with the review of a loan agreement, whose signatures throughout the entire document were forged. 

Not only has the company taken over a year to investigate this matter and notify us of their decision, but Amex also chose to ignore our numerous attempts to resolve this issue directly. And yet, all the evidence Amex could gather throughout the spam of a year to claim there was no fraud is a document with forged signatures by a former employee named XXXX XXXX as we had already informed them. Needless to say, this incompetence in their investigation only adds to the their previous negligence verifying my identity and the authenticity of my signature on the documents used to grant a business loan. Had Amex done a thorough job with their background check or ID verification, they may have noticed a few inconsistencies on the loan application. 

For starters, the contact number provided is not related to any of my business or personal telephone lines ( See document attached with highlighted info ). We even found evidence of phone call attempts by a Financing Specialist called XXXX XXXX via e-mail stating failure to reach me by the phone provided and asking me to call back ( also attached ). Clearly, this lack of monitoring allowed for my former employee to call back and impersonate me, which also means that Amex must have recorded calls of these conversations to prove that it was not me. You may even trace his line communication to his personal mobile number, or check if that is the number filed with the application. Similarly, the apartment listed under my personal information is wronged and not in accordance to my personal credit report, which should have been a red flag. Moreover, there was a XXXX  file for a business loan under my name for a different company called XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX with my authentic signature. Had Amex compared them, a suspicion of fraud would have risen as signatures are not in the least bit similar ( See authentic signature on document attached ). 

Clearly, Amex not accepting our fraud claim based on a document with forged signatures is absurd and just illegal. They may claim our generic e-mail address account for the business as enough evidence to verify my identity and knowledge of this loan application. Not only is that ridiculous, but it is also not legitimately viable as this individual used the same e-mail address in XXXX to apply for an American Express credit card under his name, XXXX XXXX ( as shown attached ). So there should have been an overlap of information in their system linking the same e-mail address to two different entities. These records verify the employee 's access and abuse of business information for illegal activity and yet, the American Express proceeded to fund and wire a large amount of money without much hesitation. 

In addition to their negligence verifying my identity and consent for the loan request, Amex also showed very poor judgement approving said loan. At the moment of the fraudulent request for a loan of {$86000.00} by XXXX, there was already an Amex loan with outstanding balance late on due payments for at least 3 months. Therefore, I can't comprehend how this financial institution expected a business that was failing to make payments on a current loan with a smaller hold-back rate to successfully payback a larger loan.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation