Consumer complaint received 2021-07-01
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: RI
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Domestic (US) money transfer
Issue: Fraud or scam

Complaint:
People claiming to be USCIS officers, ICE officers, and police officers in my location have called me saying that there is an active warrant on me. They insisted that this should not be discussed with anyone until it is confirmed and cleared. Then they asked me to download a screen sharing app. And then made me make a transfer and send a cash check to the location for " immigration bond '' to temporarily stop the arrest warrant and my " public defender '' ( can't remember the exact term they used ). 

Then they put me on hold for around 5 minutes. Attached is the information they gave me to send the money about the " Immigration bond '' ( Bank of America Business Account Name : XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. Account XXXX : XXXX. XXXX XXXX : XXXX. Amount : {$5900.00} ). They sent me a " confirmation '' via email which it's address and the content looked fake since it was not a .gov email, and that's when I realized this was a scam and told them I can not trust your statement anymore. They threatened that they will be coming in tomorrow to arrest me since they have a warrant, so I told them okay and I hung up. 


After that, I called USCIS, ICE, and local police myself to check, just in case they are real officers and they clarified that there are no such people. Also I learned that all warrants are public so I searched if there really is a warrant on me, which turned out that there are none. 

I called Bank of America trying to cancel all the transactions, but sadly they said they can not assure that the cancellation will be made since the check has already been cashed. I tried to file a dispute on the day that I got scammed, and I think we were able to file one for the XXXX transfer, but the associate told me that I would have to wait for the processing transaction to be cleared for me to file a dispute. However, I called multiple times to make sure that the claims were filed and to check the status of it. 

My defense for falling into such scam was that the phone number they've been calling me were actual office numbers anyone can look up on XXXX ( as you can see on the attached file and my phone call history ) so that made me think that this was real. I have no idea how they were able to do that and I don't know who would not freak out and doubt about this if one thinks that an actual police officer and government agents are calling in this situation even if they did nothing wrong. 

Also, the number XXXX ( XXXX ) XXXX is the number that the scammer " who claims herself to be the Police OfficeXXXX '' said is her personal number. 
The names and titles they were using are XXXX XXXX ( claiming to be Police officer ) XXXX ( Claiming to be ICE agent and superior of the Third person, can not remember the last name at this point ) Third person ( Claiming to be someone in Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, XXXX, can not remember her name ) I've already gone ahead and filed in a police report to my local police department about this matter hoping they can catch who these people were.

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