Consumer complaint received 2024-02-23
Product: Checking or savings account — CD (Certificate of Deposit)
Issue: Managing an account — Funds not handled or disbursed as instructed
Company: CADENCE BANK (LA)

Money was transferred to my sister and me from an account set up by my father. My brother is the one who authorized the transfer because he is on the account as a joint owner. This was done at the beginning of XXXX XXXXXX/XX/year>. The money was then set up under our names only. One account was set up with my name and my wifes name only then my sister set up her account with her name only. In mid XXXX I went to borrow against some of the money to purchase a new air conditioner for my house and the branch manager told me she couldnt find the account I was looking for. I then contacted my sister to see if she could check her account and it was the same result. Her account was closed. I then called the bank and spoke to the vice president and he told me that my brother called and told him that they set up the money in the wrong way. He said he wanted to set the money up under my dads name with each of us as the beneficiary. That doesnt make any sense because he has power of attorney and he would have had to set it up in that way. We couldnt do it even if we wanted to. So after some investigation we found out that he went visit my father and my father was complaining about this and that and he got scared and emailed the bank to get the money back. The bank believed him and went dig in my sister and Is account without notifying or getting permission from us and gave it back to my brother. Now this account had a significant amount of money in it. My father made my brother power of attorney and a joint owner on the account. The statement would come to my office and I would bring it to my father and Id watch him open it and look at it. I did this every month because my brother is a very unsavory person. It stayed the same amount for quite some time and then one month last XXXX XXXXt happened like I anticipated. There was a different amount in the account. They had a large amount of money taken out. I called my brother and he tried to say it wasnt money that belonged in that account because it was money that he earned. That was a lie. He knows better than to put any of his personal money in an account deemed for the XXXX children of my father. What happened was he thought no one was looking at the statement and he was going to take some and no one would notice. When I called him out on it he stuttered and lied about it. I kept raising XXXX so he decided to release our money to us. Later when my father was mad about something not related he got scared because he did it without my dad knowing and he contacted the bank to get it back. The bank employee that my brother dealt with even told him to contact us and have us contact the bank to set it up the way he was saying it was supposed to be set up. That never happened because he knew that he was lying about the whole thing. At this point it was over a month that it was in accounts under our names only and the bank went dig in our accounts to give my brother back the money. Now, my brother has his money that I caught him taking out of the account and the bank went dig in our account and gave him back our money without permission or without contacting us. That is illegal! The minute that money hit our account it became ours and my brother had no rights to it. The bank should have known better and told my brother that it is out of their hands. He would have to have permission from us to get the money back. This all happened at the same bank. Thats how it was so easy for them to do it. They illegally took our money and they did it on a lie that my brother told them. We had meetings and phone calls with the bank but they were unwilling to reverse their decision because it would show proof that they illegally stole our money.