Consumer complaint received 2023-01-31
Product: Checking or savings account — Savings account
Issue: Managing an account — Funds not handled or disbursed as instructed
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION (MO)

I was the victim of identity theft starting in midXXXX XXXX, but finally caught the fraudulent transactions on XX/XX/XXXX. I immediately contacted Bank of America and close my debit card turned in the fraudulent transactions as fraud. The next day I received a text from BOA fraud protection, asking if I had attempted to make a {$3500.00} XXXX transfer, to which I replied no I had not. The following day, I received a call that showed up on my caller ID as Bank Of America and I recognized the number as the actual Bank Of America Fraud Protection phone number since I had called it recently. When I answered and follow the prompts to be connected with a fraud specialist, I spoke with a man going by the name of XXXX XXXX, who walked me through the Fraud Denial Process, which involves sending the transaction info to what I believed was XXXX XXXX XXXX. Come to find out this individual did not work for BOA, he was the man who stole my identity, and walked me through making transfers to a bank account that he had set, rather than me forwarding fraudulent transaction info to XXXX as I was told. He tricked me into sending {$3500.00} from my checking and {$3500.00} from my savings ( totaling {$7000.00} ). When I got off the phone with the specialist I started researching online and found that this was a scam that really started to circulate with banks like Bank Of America due to their usage of XXXX and the fact that XXXX transfers are instant and once they are sent can not be stopped, even in the event of a mistake scams. I immediately contacted Bank of America and told them what happened, but rather than attempting to stop the transfer and reacquire my funds back from the account they were sent to, I was told I needed to contact the police department ( in my case the XXXX XXXX XXXX Department ) and ask them to get a warrant to put a freeze on the receiving account. In the meanwhile, the scammer had more than ample time to transfer the money out of the receiving account and close the account. Then on XX/XX/XXXX, I received a letter from Bank Of America that, despite my claims of what happened, the proof of identity theft, and being contacted by a detective from the sheriffs department, that they found no fault in my transactions as they were delivered as per my instructions, and I would not be receiving credit back to my account. From my research, this is a scam that has gained a lot of popularity since XXXX with larger banks, like Bank Of America and XXXX XXXX due to their usage of XXXX. Despite this, no warning was ever sent to me as a Bank of America customer about this type of scam, and no precautionary measures were implemented on their system to try to flag these transactions as fraudulent. Things like looking for recipient names that Use some variation of the banks name ( I was instructed to use BOA by the fraudster ), flagging the common amounts used by scammers ( {$3500.00} is very common ), or not allowing large amounts of money to be sent to a newly created recipient. The fraudsters literally get you to create a recipient with their info and send the transactions to it withing minutes of its creation. If a 24-hour waiting period was put on new recipients, it would give customers time to research the scam. And the likelihood of the fraudster calling back the next day is much lower. No such precautions were in place, and no warning of this fraud has ever been set out by my bank. The bank also does not have any sort of temporary hold or denial time after the transfer in case of a mistake or scam. During my research, I also turned up that under Regulation E ( of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ) that electronic transfers are protected, even in the case of mistakes or in my case fraudulent transfers. Bank of America did not do an adequate job of warning customers of potential scams involving fake Bank of America, texts and calls that could come in after filing fraud or identity theft claims. Bank Of America has built an environment with XXXX that is perfect for fraudsters to manipulate and steal thousands of dollars from its customers. Bank Of America 's lack of warning, precautionary measures, and refusal to make the fraudulent charges right is disgraceful and completely irresponsible for a bank protected by the FDIC and claiming to put your protection first.