Consumer complaint received 2021-08-28
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:
On Friday, XX/XX/XXXX at XXXX I received a text message from XXXX stating the following : " Bank of America Fraud Alert : Are you Attempting to Make a XXXX Transfer To XXXX XXXX In The Amount of : {$3500.00}? Reply Back ( YES ) If This A Valid Transaction. If You Did Not Attempt To Make This Transfer Please Reply ( NO ) And A Representative Will Reach Out To You Immediately Regarding This Transaction ( Standard Data & Message Rates May Apply ) ''. The moment I saw the text message I did not pay attention to the senders number but solely on the message. I work at a XXXX  and at the moment I was helping XXXX and XXXX year olds with their routine, therefore I did stop to think about whether the message was legitimate or not. At XXXX I replied " NO ''. At XXXX I received a phone call from XXXX, Bank of America number. I picked up the phone and a man courteously greeted me on the other side. They apologized for the inconvenience and stated the process to reverse the transaction would be quickly. The man sounded just like a Bank of America Representative, quiet background, courteous, apologetic and knowledgeable about how to walk you thru the process every step of the way. They told me to log onto my online banking and check my accounts. Then they proceeded to tell me that the {$3500.00} were " on hold '' and that in order to reverse the " on hold '' I needed to send the money back to myself via XXXX. It sounded reasonable to me because I was not transferring money to another person or bank. He told me to click on the transfer/XXXX, then to click send button, then to input my phone number into the " add/search name, phone, email '' search engine tab and I typed my number and name, finally he told me to input the amount of {$3500.00} in the amount section and press send. As soon as I pressed send the man hung up at XXXX. At that moment I realized I had been scammed. I also saw that I had pending text messages and alerts, and that's where I realized where the money had been transferred to XXXX because I had received text alerts at XXXX from XXXX, but because I was attending the call I did not pay much attention to the incoming text messages. I immediately called BofA and told them exactly what had happened. They stated that in fact, it sounded as a scam so they opened a claim for me. I provided the BofA fraud representative as much information as possible. On XX/XX/XXXX, I received a letter from BofA stating I was denied a credit. Also, the letter from BofA appeared incredibly unprofessional and thought it was fake, the letterhead is washed out and the envelope was not sealed at all, the letter could have slipped out very easily. I called BofA and they stated it was a legitimate letter, I was very surprised. So far I have called every week to check on the status of my claim and BofA states they can not do more about my claim. I have been a customer of BofA since XXXX and I find it incredibly hard that they can not do more for me as a loyal customer. After feeling hopeless I began to research about XXXX scams online and I stumbled upon an article by XXXX XXXX, XXXX XXXX XXXX and the man who XXXX interviewed experienced the exact same scam, XXXX : XXXX, but fortunately BofA was able to grant him a credit. Now my question is, why was the man able to received a credit and not I? HELP I have all records of the text messages, phone log and BofA claim letter

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