Consumer complaint received 2024-10-23
Product: Checking or savings account — Checking account
Issue: Managing an account — Funds not handled or disbursed as instructed
Company: UNITED SERVICES AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION (VA)

On XX/XX/year>, I was spoofed called with a USAA phone number and the fraudster stated they were from the USAA fraud department and there was a fraudulent XXXX transaction in the amount of {$400.00} from my checking account. They stated that they would help me secure my account by resetting my password after I provided my user id. After that they said a text message would come across and I would need to change the password to the temporary one he would provide. After he provided me the temporary password he placed me on hold. At that point I directed my wife to call USAA to verify that I was actually on the phone with a legitimate USAA call. The USAA representative my wife spoke with said they did not reach out to us and that was when we realized we were being scammed. My wife asked the representative to lock down the account multiple times. We were not sure if the lock down occurred, but the representative stated that my wife could open a checking account in her name only to salvage any remaining funds. 

During the time my wife was attempting to setup the new checking account at the suggestion of the USAA representative, the fraudster was able to add my name to their USAA account and link it to my USAA account to initiate the fraudulent transactions. The name associated with the fraudulent account was the USAA member XXXX XXXX. The USAA representative saw that they added an additional email and contact number on to my account and the USAA representative removed those, as I did not authorize them or add them myself. The fraudster was able to take over our account and initiated a transfer of {$5000.00} out of our externally linked savings account into our bank account, then transferred the funds to the fraudulently linked account. They also transferred out {$11000.00} from our checking account to the fraudulently linked account and then turned around and transferred {$10000.00} back to our joint checking account. At that point my wife had the new checking account setup and was able to transfer over the {$10000.00} to the new account in her name only so the fraudster could not access it. We then transferred the remaining {$160.00} in the checking account to the new account. We then asked the representative if we should transfer the {$2000.00} in our USAA savings account or if the fraudster had access to it? He said we could transfer the funds in savings to be sure it wasnt stolen. 

Later that night I received email notifications from USAA that two disputes for mortgage payments were processed in the amounts of {$2000.00} and {$2000.00} and one bank transfer dispute for {$1500.00}. The fraudster initiated all of these amounts and we did not authorize them. From what we can tell from USAAs website all disputes must be called in and can not be initiated via the website. We did not make the calls to dispute these transactions.

I spoke to the fraud department and USAA multiple times that day and days after regarding the account take over and explained the situation noted above multiple times to various representatives to ensure everything was documented. 

On XX/XX/year>, we received an email from USAA that our passwords and pins had been reset. We called in to USAA and reported to them that we did not initiate this unauthorized change in password and pin. We then asked the representative to file a fraud report about this instance. At that point the representative told us that our account had been unlocked and the account was set back to a normal status. We stated that we thought the fraud department would reach out to us before anything was unlocked and why was the fraudsters account still linked to our account with the ability to transfer funds to the fraudulent account. The representative just said that was still possible, there was not a way to lock the fraudulent account out. At that point, we saw that the disputed transactions were available and we took the action to move those funds to my wifes new account so they were not stolen, since then fraudsters account was still linked. 

On XX/XX/year> we called USAA for an update on why our account was unlocked without notifying us first and why the fraudster was still linked to our account. We spoke to the USAA Fraud and Security representative and she informed us we were liable for the losses. She also stated that fraud did occur and the fraudulent account should not be still linked to our account. She did sympathize with us and she stated she did not agree with the ruling based on the evidence, but had to convey the message of management of expectations. She also noted that the fraudsters account was still under investigation and would put in a request to unlink the fraudsters account. The timeline for unlinking could take up to 5 days where additional fraud could still occur during that time. We did ask her to review the notes to see if all of our concerns were properly addressed in their notes. She noted that we should emphasize that the new checking account in my wifes name only was suggested by the representative and the phone recording could be reviewed to verify that. 

She advised us to submit a request for re-review of the fraud investigation, but she could not do it herself and we would have to call back into the main USAA number. We did ask why she could not put that request in and just said she could not do it. At that point we hung up and called back into USAA and we spoke to multiple first line representatives as they did not know how to route our re-review request. We finally were put into contact with a representative that stated he submitted the re-review request and it could take up to 3 business days for a new ruling.