Consumer complaint received 2022-05-04
Product: Checking or savings account — Checking account
Issue: Closing an account — Company closed your account
Company: U.S. BANCORP (WI)

I was the victim of a part time job scam. The company promised me payment of {$300.00} / week for having advertising decals put on my car, and sent me a check that included funds for the first week and {$3000.00} to pay the person that was putting the decals on the car. I transferred the funds as soon as the check cleared the bank. Then the company told me that the person coming to place the decals was in an accident and that they were setting up someone else to receive the funds. They then sent me an additional check for {$3000.00} that check cleared U.S Bank ( where I've banked for 20 year ) or so I thought. I transferred the funds to the next person and as soon as I did that, my account was locked. The message I received was on my mobile banking app was that I couldn't get into my account because of a problem on U.S. Bank 's end. I didn't find out until later that day that my account was locked due to fraudulent activity. I left a message on the e-fraud officer 's line and never received a call back. The check cleared on XX/XX/2022 and I reported the fraud at XXXX that evening after I found out why my account was locked. I NEVER received any notice from U.S. Bank that there was an issue on my end or that the check had bounced. 

After not hearing back from the e-fraud representative I called U.S Bank fraud line again on XX/XX/XXXX, in the morning. I reported the whole issue to someone at U.S. Bank who said they would do an investigation and that a branch manager was the only one that could reopen my account. On XX/XX/XXXX in the afternoon I called the branch manager who said that he couldn't reopen my account until we had funds to put in as the transfers and bounced check left us with a - {$800.00} balance. On Thursday afternoon XX/XX/XXXX, I called the fraud line again to see how the investigation was progressing, I spoke with someone in the e-fraud and fraud departments who said that my account was being closed, and our mortgage payment, which had been issued on XX/XX/XXXX had been sent back, resulting in the overage being paid back and insufficient funds AND a {$100.00} late fee for paying our mortgage. The U.S. Bank fraud representative told me that I was the one who had committed fraud and therefore, I was not eligible for an account with them. I was also told that they would not be doing an investigation into the scam or into the XXXX accounts of the unknown people that I made payments to. There was no attempt to gather the documented information that I had and essentially U.S. Bank refused to help at all. So, now we are out the {$2500.00} that we transferred to the scammers AND we are out bounced check fees and another couple of hundred for returned payment fees on bills that we had scheduled to be paid. AND we have to wait another 4-10 business days to get the remainder of the returned mortgage payment to try and open a new checking account somewhere else. We will NEVER use any U.S Bank account or product again as I feel like they have been complicit with the scammers in taking advantage of an already horrible situation and charging us added fees AND making us out to the be the ones guilty of fraud. I hope that no one ever has to experience a situation like this and that people pull their accounts from U.S. Bank and invest somewhere else.