Consumer complaint received 2022-03-27
Company: BANK OF THE WEST
State: CA
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: International money transfer
Issue: Fraud or scam

Complaint:
Our company XXXX XXXX is a victim of international wire fraud with a loss of {$330000.00} that was initiated through our business bank account at Bank of the West. We had an account with Bank of the West for six years, but had some problems with check fraud in early XXXX. Some of the long time employees would monitor our account on a daily basis and communicate and we felt a level of comfort, even though we had been told in confidence that there were major staffing problems at the bank. A few months later these employees left the bank and we were told to consider switching our business account to the new Treasury Now program to provide additional security and protections for our account. We were aggressively pushed into this program by XXXX XXXX and XXXX XXXX and XXXX XXXX in XX/XX/2021 and have now learned that this program was not even active until XX/XX/2021. This is a problem because one day after we switched our account to use the new Treasury Now program and activated it two fraudulent international wire transfers were initiated and approved by Bank of the West on XXXX XXXX for $ 1XXXX to XXXX bank in XXXX XXXX and again on XX/XX/XXXX for {$210000.00} to XXXX bank in XXXX XXXX with a listing of " Seek Aim Education '' as the beneficiary. We did not approve these transactions, we had never initiated a wire transfer over the 6 years we banked with Bank of the West, we have never initiated an international wire transfer and have never sent six figure payments to anyone at anytime. How is it possible that Bank of the West approved these fraudulent transactions? 

On XX/XX/XXXX we discovered the fraud and went into the branch and filed a report with IC ( internet crime/FBI ) as well as a report with the XXXX XXXX police XXXX and they assigned XXXX XXXX and a few others from their " Corporate Securities Investigations '' department to investigate. When we spoke they told us they were working hard and doing everything possible to help recover our funds and said we had a 50 % chance of getting the funds recovered. They said they had someone with the XXXX XXXX XXXX on the ground in XXXX XXXX that was helping. Weeks went by with no word about Bank of the West communicating with XXXX in XXXX XXXX. They kept telling us because of the time difference it was difficult getting in contact with them to discuss the wires and then about six weeks later we were told that the money had been transferred from XXXX XXXX bank to mainland XXXX and there was nothing they could do about it. 

We tried repeatedly to get answers from the bank regarding their internal security process and have serious questions and concerns because we had been trying for several days with Bank of the West to activate the program and kept running into glitches requiring them to provide new password and unique user ID to us. The day after it became activated the fraud occurred. 
We were told that Bank of the West would offer the following customer security protections 1. Internal validation controls to stop fraud ( what are these ). 2 Behavior monitoring ( back office fraud detection and monitoring that analyzes all out going ACH wire transfers and other online banking activity 3. System Administrator information ( how did this transfer occur without the knowledge of the system administrator? ) 4. Signature authorization ( their internal policy requires signature authorization for a six figure international wire transfer but none was provided?? Please explain ) 5. Network Security Procedures ( what exactly are these? ) Due to the multiple failed attempts to set up and activate our account and multiple changed user ID '' s and passwords, XXXX XXXX and XXXX XXXX had all of our information, and likely many other employees at Bank of the West. We do not think that it is a coincidence that when we finally got the account activated that 24 hours later the wire fraud occurred on XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX. What is the bank trying to hide? We need answers!

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