Consumer complaint received 2022-01-31
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service — Domestic (US) money transfer
Issue: Fraud or scam — 
Company: TD BANK US HOLDING COMPANY (NY)

My wife and I were victims of wire fraud, when someone hacked an e-mail account and impersonated our attorney with instructions for wiring our home downpayment ahead of our closing. // I wired our {$130000.00} downpayment from my TD Bank account to a fraudulent XXXX account just before noon on XXXX XX/XX/2022. At about XXXX XXXX we discovered the fraud because we received correspondence from the real attorney 's office, and confirmed on the phone. // My wife and I spent the next two days shuttling between different branches of TD, XXXX and multiple law enforcement agencies. TD Bank has clearly designed the recovery process to be as opaque as possible, because distributed responsibility significantly weakens their incentive to facilitate the return of the stolen money : // * In-person bankers at the branch are largely clueless and powerless about the whole process, despite good intentions. No one had any knowledge of the actions we needed to take, and the best they could do was pick up the phone and call a back office when we pressured them. All the back office would tell them is where to file a form requesting the form that we actually needed ; the branch has no subsequent visibility into or influence over the process. 

* The way the process is set up, the victim can only communicate with their bank, and only through a local branch. But the branch bankers can only make requests by phone to the fraud office. And the fraud office delegates full responsibility for the investigation to recipient bank. Thus, the recipient bank is the only one with real influence on the process, and the victim has no way of communicating with that bank because the victim is not a customer. // * The banks must recognize that time is essential, because wires can be nearly instant and the schemes are designed to remove money from the recipient account as soon as possible, at which point chances of recovery are low. However, there does not appear to be much sense of urgency in the banks ' process. We believe we succeeded in getting the target bank to freeze the fraudulent account, but only after visiting three branches in person, making several phone calls, pushing two internal connections, making a recall request through our bank, and reporting to the FBI and local law enforcement in two states. We have no confidence that we would have achieved such an outcome without such persistence and understanding of the process. And even so, after five days, our only confident information comes from the FBI and no one has confirmed how much of our money is recoverable. // * One stage of the wire fraud recovery procedure is an indemnification agreement filed by the victim 's bank to the recipient 's bank, essentially saying that the recipient 's bank will not be responsible for legal repercussions if the fraud allegation is challenged. We only knew of this concept because of the FBI ; TD Bank never informed us. Several TD Bank employees professed ignorance and stonewalled us, until a supervisor ultimately conceded on the phone that they are all instructed to be clueless and resistant when asked to file forms that give the bank legal exposure. The form has been requested, but as yet not filed. // * As we now know, universal advice says that no one should ever wire money without verifying the wire instructions in person or on the phone with the recipient. Moreover, wire fraud is a very common crime that I should have known to look out for. But most people rarely if ever wire money, and their first wire will often come at a stressful and vulnerable time -- like a home purchase. TD Bank gave me no such warning of these commonly known facts, and thus passively facilitated the fraud.