Consumer complaint received 2023-11-14
Company: FIRST CITIZENS BANCSHARES, INC.
State: FL
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Managing an account
Sub-issue: Funds not handled or disbursed as instructed

Complaint:
XXXX at XXXX our employee attempted to enable XXXX with our company account through the First Citizens Bank website-online portal and received an error message to contact Customer Service. She emailed our bank representative at the local branch who responded the following day with a Customer Service number for her to call. She did and the Customer Service representative alerted her : " there was an update that unlinked all First Citizens customer phone numbers to XXXX '' and proceeded to connect her cell phone to the account to enable XXXX. 
XXXX at XXXX our employee received a text from First Citizens Bank to verify a XXXX transfer. After checking with two other employees, she responded at XXXX that the XXXX transfer was unauthorized. 
XXXX at XXXX she received a response that a representative would contact her shortly. 
XXXX at XXXX she received a call with the Caller ID First Citzn Bnk XXXX ( XXXX ) XXXX -- the actual Customer Service number for First Citizens Bank . 
From there the employee was convinced this was a First Citizens Customer Service representative and proceeded to give access information to the account the XXXX feature had been enabled for on XXXX. 
XXXX our employee contacted our bank representative and found there were multiple ACHs totaling {$100000.00} attempting to be sent from the account and reported them as fraudulent. The bank said they would not stop the funds from leaving the account and she would have to request a fraud case from their fraud department. 
She did so and this was assigned to XXXX XXXX. She also went to the XXXX Police Department the same day and filed a report, including uploading all evidence to the link provided by the Police Department. 
XXXX XXXX was emailed, called and nudged for two weeks and finally responded with : " My investigation has been concluded. The decision has been made to deny the claim for the 2 ACH payments. First Citizens Bank will not be providing reimbursement. '' It is important to note that XXXX would not respond concerning the likely breach of First Citizens Bank client information on XXXX and any information as to where the {$100000.00} went. The detective working on the case at the XXXX Police Department attempting to get information from the bank reported to our XXXX XXXX that the bank was being subpoenaed as they refused to provide the required information for the police investigation to proceed. 
It seems very incorrect that the information as to what happened on XXXX is being ignored and " swept under the carpet. '' Almost certainly there was a security breach in client information with First Citizens Bank which resulted in the scammers knowing the phone numbers associated with our company account. It is also not understandable why the bank would refuse to stop the transfer of the ACH when it was reported the same morning and why the bank would refuse to impart necessary information to the police, unless the bank is attempting to hide the fact that there was a security breach. 
Any assistance in investigating this Financial Institution further would be highly appreciated. We would not want someone else to fall victim of similar circumstances and through a bank that offers no help, compassion, information or assistance and refuses to take any responsibility for the fraudulent activity that occurred and the highly likely security breach of their confidential client information.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation