Consumer complaint received 2022-04-04
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: CA
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Domestic (US) money transfer
Issue: Fraud or scam

Complaint:
I was robbed via XXXX and Bank of America itself for {$3700.00}. It is a known scam where someone poses as a-out-of-country film production company wanting to hire a local production manager to facilitate the job. Nothing this ( fake ) company asked me to do was out of the ordinary for this kind of work, the only weird thing is they send a check priority mail, which is how they got me, instead of electronically transferring funds as is the norm these days. 

The XXXX of it is, the two accounts I was tricked into transferring money to are also BOFA customers and they did nothing, everything is set up to help the scammers, not the victims. Even though I figured out I was being scammed before the check bounced, the BOFA fraud people had me running around in vain for a month, their story changed every time I talked to them, local law enforcement wont do anything because it was a multi-state scam, the FBI does nothing except have you fill out Internet Crime Complaint ( IC3 ). I thought they would at least freeze the funds and investigate, I presented all the evidence, they do nothing except protect the folks that stole my money. Now Ive learned that BOFA is part owner of XXXX, all the while, the BOFA fraud folks told me it was more a XXXX problem than a bank problem. 

I was so embarrassed, Ive sniffed out so many scam attempts on both me and loved ones but they finally got me, it was a month-long, elaborate operation. They contacted me via email under the guise of hiring me to production manage a film shoot for them, a production company from XXXX XXXX. They sent a script, employment/tax forms to fill out, they even sent one back for me to correct because I missed something. The people doing this obviously had film business experience because everything happened like it would for being hired to manage a location job with out of country people- they give you the money to run the job so they dont have to pay foreign transaction fees on every transaction. 

They told me a check was on the way, and gave me explicit directions on depositing it which was the red flag I missed. I researched the production company and there was a legit film company with this guys name I was supposedly communicating with right there on the website as a director. What they did on their correspondence with me was use email address that look like they are from the company they were pretending to be from but one character would be different so you wouldnt notice unless youre looking for it - I discovered all this backtracking. There were texts too, even a couple live phone conversations. 

They sent a tracking # for the priority mail with the check they were sending, I looked up the address it was coming from and it was a legit residential address in XXXX, Texas, not an abandoned warehouse or false address. When the check arrived it was from a trust in New Jersey, I looked that up too, it was a legit company. I was living in XXXX, Arizona at the time all this went down. Turns out this was all by design, they make sure the check arrives on a Friday, they say explicitly to deposit it in the atm ( why? - the big red flag ). This is the only reason they got me. I was going to go into the bank and deposit it that way but unfortunately there was a line so I did just stay in the car and go to the drive-through atm out of laziness, not because they instructed me to do so. 

They told me to deposit the check in the atm on Friday and to send them a photo of the deposit receipt, then to check my account the next day, Saturday, to see that the check had been deposited into my account. They found this gray area to mess with. By now, most of us are used to the electronic transactions that either show right up into your account when something is deposited or there is some kind of indication that it is pending. When you deposit a check at the atm the receipt you get says only {$300.00} of the deposited check amount ( {$3900.00} ) is available. Here is what they exploit, when I got online to check my account that Friday, sure enough, only {$300.00} of that deposit was available. When I signed in the next day the full {$3900.00} shows that its there. But its not really, thats the XXXX of it. Your account online shows the full amount of the deposited check even though the funds are not actually there. 

Its the old school banking, they trust you as a customer that you arent depositing checks that bounce so even though the funds havent literally been transferred between the banks yet, unlike electronic transfers that are either there or they arent. So once I thought the funds were there, I thought I was on the job, like any other. If the bank would simply indicate what funds are in your account and what is pending this scam wouldnt work. What is the greed factor that keeps them from honest accounting on our statements? 

This fake XXXX XXXX company sent me Purchase orders for camera and lighting equipment, along with invoices to two different individuals. This is common in the film business, that crew members rent out their own equipment, so nothing strange there. They had me do this all via XXXX, although along the way they had me set up a paypal payment to a vendor then rescinded it - what did I care, it was all their money right? 

The plan was to have a in-person meeting the next day Sunday where I would meet this guy I was communicating with all along, he picked out a XXXX near my place to meet and go over the upcoming shoot, and to give me another check to deposit. I was to be paid out of what remained from these deposits ; like an idiot, at this point I had made three XXXX payments to two different people, {$2500.00}, {$1000.00}, and {$200.00} for a total of {$3700.00} of which turned out to be all of my money. They did send more invoices to pay to see how far I would go but at least I stopped when I did, waiting for the next check. Of course no one showed up for the meeting. 

At first I thought no big deal, stuff happens, but as I laid in bed that night I started figuring it out, went to the bank website to research the check deposit procedure and realized Id been had, and called BOFA bank fraud that night to report it. Even though the check didnt bounce, and my money went to two other BOFA accounts and I had ( and still have ) all the evidence. They told me to file a local police report which I did and to have them issue a subpeona for the information from the bank fraud investigation. I spent countless hours trying to make that happen only to find that its impossible, bank should have never told me that. The scammers did a good job, since three states are involved, there is nothing local law enforcement or check fraud department can do. 

Everyone involved directed me to fill out a Internet Crime Complaint ( XXXX ) form with the FBI, which I did but they dont do anything other than collect the data, I talked to several agents. 

Each thing with the bank fraud was to wait 45 days for them to finish their investigation. Once I figured out law enforcement either couldnt or wouldnt do anything and reported this all back to BOFA fraud dept. they said they would take another 45 day investigation and then send me all the evidence they had so I could use it if I wanted to hire a lawyer. When I received that report they said they couldnt send me any of that information due to its sensitivity, or the like. They market they XXXX out of how hard they are fighting against scammers and fraud but in my experience, the whole system is set up to protect the scammers, not the victim. The fact that this all took place within the accounts of the banks own customers and they wont do anything about it is mind blowing. 

Months after all that I received, from BOFA, a black and white copy of the bounced check and a letter saying it was still a legal check if I wanted to re-deposit ( as if someone just made a mistake having insufficient funds ) which, of course, got me to thinking. I got lucky here, I found an actual human being in a manager of the local BOFA branch who I scheduled a meeting with in the very bank I made the deposit of the fraudulent check. I incorrectly thought if I could find out if there was any money in the account of where that check came from that if I timed it right, I could re-deposit it and recover my loss. 

I had my file folder with all the evidence with me when I arrived. Right away, he saw the USPS priority mail cardboard envelope I had and he asked if that was what the check came in, it did. He said if I saw you in line with that, or a savvy teller would have alerted me to the strong possibility that it was a scam. He said pretty much the only people sending out priority mail checks this way are scammers! 

Next, he took a look at the black and white copy of the bounced check, the check itself was this beautiful full color official looking thing with gold flake embossing etc., he could even tell on the black and white copy that it was fake, he pointed out the subtle differences in the font and that no official check has font variances. He also said a teller couldve called the police on me as if I was trying to pass a bad check! 

He explained to me how the scammers just purchase the check paper and create their own checks using stolen bank account information and print them up themselves. Their account info was stolen to use on the fraudulent home-made check to me, the account holders were not part of the scam, they are also victims. 

I recently moved back to XXXX XXXX and was randomly contacted again ( Im listed on film business crew websites ) to be hired for a job, using the very same verbiage as my incident except this time saying a lot about covid - I contacted the FBI again and explained this whole thing to them, explaining that I was willing to go along with it, like I wanted to be hired, we could follow through and bust these people, but they dont care, didnt want to do anything, told me to fill out another XXXX form, crazy. 

I went as far up the griping line at BOFA via telephone and letters, nothing. XXXX, if nothing else, I just begged them to simply indicate on your account whether a check has actually cleared or not, how the XXXX difficult would that be? Just indicate whether a check has been deposited and pending, or fully deposited - if they did that, this specific type of scam wouldnt work. Why dont they? There surely must be some greed reason there. 

Both the BOFA fraud people, and FBI told me there was a rash of these scams directly targeting film industry people. The FBI kept saying they can only collect the data, and when something becomes a big enough problem ( whatever that threshold is ) then they will do something about it. I countered that by asking if there was a way for other victims to contact each other if they chose to do so, so we could make a bigger case out of it they said no way. 

I state it again, the industry and law enforcement keep trumpeting how hard they are fighting for our protection when in reality they are covering for the thieves.

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