Consumer complaint received 2021-11-29
Company: Tribal Lending Enterprise, Inc.
State: NJ
Product: Payday loan, title loan, or personal loan
Sub-product: Installment loan
Issue: Getting the loan

Complaint:
Someone opened a loan from Mountain Summit Financial in my name pretending to be me -- I did not apply for this loan.

The criminal used my name and contact details ( email, address, phone number and more ) to open an account at Mountain Summit Financial, apply for a loan, and receive funds all in under half an hour over the weekend. Mountain Summit issued the loan without validating it was actually me in any way. They issued the loan even though all of my credit bureau accounts are frozen, and no loans should be opened in my name while they're frozen. 

I found out about it because I received 3 emails in rapid succession, with the first indicating the account had been created, and the second saying my loan documents were ready for signature. These seemed like traditional phishing attempts ( and I've received many such emails in the past year due to numerous data breaches containing my PII ), but then I got a 3rd email saying the funds were on their way. This is what scared me and I reached out to XXXX XXXX who has been advising me on security and identity issues since the prior breaches/numerous phishing attempts.

He advised me to call Mountain Summit Financial, but they were closed on the weekend and didn't even have a voicemail box to leave a message -- Again, that they were able to open an account, accept an application for a loan, and issue payment on it when they weren't even open to validate it is SUPER troubling. 

Working with XXXX, we determined that this was likely a successful fraud incident and we logged into the Mountain Summit Financial site to see what else we could find out ( since the criminal used my real email address, I was able to change the password so I could log in ). This is where we learned the money was being sent to an account at XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX, that the loan application claims the XXXX account was is in my name -- this is not my account, and that the loan carried a 500 % interest rate!! 

I called XXXX MANY times over the weekend to warn them and try to get them to block the inbound transfer or freeze the account and get law enforcement involved. They wouldn't even transfer me to anyone who could help ( more about that in a second complaint I'll file after this ). 

When no attempts to work with XXXX ( over multiple hours ) were helpful, and multiple attempts to call Mountain Summit Financial were successful, I filed a complaint on Mountain Summit Financial 's website.

I finally reached someone at Mountain Summit Financial today who said they would review my complaint and get back to me with next steps by Wednesday -- They were able to open a fraudulent account in my name and issue funds in under 30 minutes over a holiday weekend, but can't be bothered to sort out a crime in the same amount of time... 

I'd very much appreciate your help investigating this company.

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