Consumer complaint received 2019-06-21
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: IL
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Domestic (US) money transfer
Issue: Fraud or scam

Complaint:
I suffered the consequences of cyber hacking and social engineering. I was an innocent, nave first-time homebuyer at the age of XXXX and purchased property for the very first time in my life in XXXX of 2015. Email was the primary source ( 98 % of the time ) of communication between me and my closing attorney, who was referred to me by my realtor. My closing attorney uses XXXX as his provider while I used my work email just about the whole time, which is of a large corporation with high security. My closing attorney was very aware I was a first-time home buyer. I stressed I was totally nave about the process of purchasing property. I made this very clear to him from the very beginning and asked he guide me through every step and the sad thing is, I trusted him. As we went back and forth with our emails ( he barely ever called me ), I eventually received wiring instructions from him and I fell for the scam. I lost $ XXXX. 

My closing attorney denies any liability and even blames the hacking on my email instead. Reading related articles online, I see this has been an ongoing crime for some time and I'm shocked neither my realtor, nor closing attorney, nor the banks involved warned me of such. I made it very clear this money was intended for closing. Makes me wonder why there are no laws obligating strict rules to ensure such crime is prevented. My closing attorney was very negligent as he claimed he sent me the proper closing instructions the Wednesday before the XXXX holiday weekend even when closing was scheduled for the Monday after. Indeed, I never received this email. When I asked for proof, he gave an excuse he does not keep items in his Sent box and the realtor emailed me a picture of the email instead. It revealed he sent this email to an incorrect email address ; he had all of a sudden misspelled my email address this time. That, in itself, is proof of negligence and creates suspicion. 

I was forced to hire a criminal attorney which cost me an additional $ XXXX. He managed to recover $ XXXX. I'm still out $ XXXX + the $ XXXX for attorney fees. $ XXXX may be chump change to many ( or compared to other similar losses ) but for someone whose yearly income is less than $ 70K, it's a significant amount. Though my criminal attorney has not fully closed my case, I'm very doubtful he'll be able to recover the remaining funds. He mentioned he would like to set forth a cause of action against the title company and a cause of action ( in all probability for negligent referral ) against the real estate broker. He also mentioned he would really like to sue the Bank of America for failure to catch suspicious activity. I was XXXX with my XXXX baby when I fell victim to this tragedy only to suffer another as I lost my baby. She was born 4 months after and unexpectedly and shockingly passed away 3 hours after birth. I've since had XXXX children and could really use my money which took a lot of hard work, discipline, determination, perseverance and time to save ; it was the only reason I swallowed my pride and lived with my father until almost 2 decades after high school. Kindly tell me there's justice. It feels like as if I took $ XXXX of my hard-earned money just to crumple it and throw away. I'd appreciate any assistance.

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 monetary relief