Consumer complaint received 2024-03-11
Product: Checking or savings account — Checking account
Issue: Managing an account — Deposits and withdrawals
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION (CA)

This complaint is a follow-up and addendum to earlier complaint, CFPB complaint ID : XXXX. 

A bit of summary of the earlier complaint : In XXXX, I noticed around 50 transactions on my bank of america statements, dating back about four months, of fraudulent ACH transactions, where unknown actors withdrew money from my account in amounts ranging from XXXX dollars to XXXX dollars, multiple times. I had not checked my bank account in detail over the last two months, but I have a sense of usually what needs to go out. These transactions were fraudulent and not as a result of anything I had done - someone ( or a network of bad actors ) breached Bank of America 's security system and caused money from my account to be paid through ACH to the bad actor 's credit card accounts in various banks ( XXXX, XXXX, XXXX XXXX XXXX, many others ). Yes, I could have caught these earlier, but I reported all of these immediately to Bank of America. The Bank immediately put a freeze on the account ( so no money should go out ) and credited back several of these transactions. However, for the largest of the transactions, about {$6000.00}, they have summarily said it's not their problem ( because the transaction is over two months ) and they can not refund. Two different claims agents blamed it entirely on me - that I should have reviewed my transactions and reported sooner and that it was not the Bank 's problem as a result. I agree that regulations require the bank to refund a transaction only if a complaint is made within 60 days, but this is beyond what the regulations cover ( usually when a transaction is disputed when a merchant charges more than they should have, or your ATM card is stolen and the information is used ). This is beyond that - I had no control or participation in my information being used by bad actors- it was a basic failure of the Bank 's fraud prevention system that should have been designed to protect it's customers ' money. The fraud should have been easy to detect or at least flag by a bank that managed millions of accounts - each ACH withdrawal has a caption entry that identifies an " XXXX '' name - the name of the account holder at the receiving bank. For the years and years I have maintained my account, and in most normal situations, the XXXX has to be my name or the name of my wife ( co-account owner ). All of the fraudulent transactions has XXXX names that are in no way connected to our accounts- transactions that call out credit card payments being auto withdrawn from our accounts but with clear name entries to random names. This happened over 50 times and Bank of America 's fraud defense systems did not capture ANY Of these. When asked what fraud prevention steps they have taken for these, or to share with me authorizations that I should have given for these to happen, the Bank has refused to provide any such information ( despite many such requests ). As you will see below, the fraud continues to happen and in even more egregious manners and the Bank refuses to investigate the fraudulent breach of their defense system or the inadequacy of their fraud controls or take any responsibility - Instead, it has placed all of the responsibility on me, has chosen to hide behind the regulations that give it cover for not having to assume responsibility for failing to provide basic fraud protection to my account. 

Additional/new information on the complaint : After two months of many dozens of calls covering each transaction and submitting many claims, Bank of America has done nothing to stem the fraud happening on my account. What is perplexing is that there are newer fruad attempts the bank has allowed to happen on my account and so jarring that it really brings to question what the Bank does to protect our accounts. My checking account is frozen as a result of the prior fraudulent transactions, and no debit or withdraw activity is allowed for 180 days ( as set up by the Bank! ). Despite that, last week, there have many transactions ( all of them, again, fraudulent transactions ) that the bank has allowed to happen and debited money from this account ( my account is now in negative and the Bank has been sending me messages that I am delinquent on this account ). The most jarring of these issues - a new type of fraud on the account where someone ( a totally random person, with their name on a fabricated check with their name but my account number ) deposited a check and has been able to withdraw money from the account. You would assume that a Bank at least checks the name of the account holder on the top of the check and matches that to the account name before allowing a check to be honored, but Bank of America has not even done this. A fully fabricated check, with a fraudulent perpetrator 's name as the account holder on the check, with their signature on it, has been allowed to be honored just because it has my account number on the bottom. That the bank does not do any basic verification on deposited checks is extremely scary a situation ( copies of check attached below ). The other transactions were similar fraud transactions ( similar to the ones reported before, which the bank has clearly chosen not to do anything about ). The biggest issue of them all- the bank placed a restriction and froze the account and is still continuing for these to go through. No fraud protection, their basic freeze controls are a full failure, and no accountability or even adequate responses. I need to continue to submit new claims for each of these transactions, which take forever and have been a drain on my time and energy over the last two months ( at least 20 hours spent so far on these!! )