Consumer complaint received 2025-03-07 00:00:00
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service — Mobile or digital wallet
Issue: Fraud or scam — 
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: CA

Complaint narrative:
XXXX scam : On XXXX XX/XX/year> I got a phone call from someone claiming to be from XXXX XXXX bank ( call came from XXXX ), asking me if Id opened an account there recently. I said no. They said someone using my name and phone number, but a different address, had opened an account at a branch in North Carolina, deposited money, and then proceeded to use XXXX transactions to send money from that account, using my XXXX account, which is attached to my phone number. 

The caller said they would close the fraudulent XXXX XXXX account and told me I should also contact XXXX customer service ( XXXX ) to reverse the XXXX transactions, because even though the user wasnt taking money out of my legitimate Citibank account ( which is the XXXX my XXXX account is attached to ), the fact that they were using my phone number as the number for their XXXX account left me vulnerable to fraud. The caller said they had probably cloned my number, and that in addition to reversing the transactions, Id need to have XXXX " detach '' my phone number from this fraudulent account and cloned number. 

Caller said I should call XXXX XXXX back ( XXXX or XXXX ) if I needed anything. 

On XXXX XX/XX/year> I called the XXXX customer service number given to me ( above ) by the purported XXXX XXXX representative and explained the situation. 

The customer service rep took me through a series of increasingly complicated stepswhich I thought were necessary to reverse the XXXX transactionsthat took more than XXXX hours to complete. This is clearly part of the scams effectiveness : they wear you down. I had no idea at the beginning that it would take this long, so as the minutes ticked by I lost track of time and became exhausted, but still felt I needed to complete this process to protect my bank and XXXX accounts. 

They had me add a person they said was a XXXX customer service XXXX ( XXXX XXXX, XXXX ) to my contacts in XXXX and then perform XXXX XXXX transactions in the amounts of the fraudulent transactions in order to undo them, with the record numbers of those fraudulent transactions in the notes field ( including these record numbers was the " signal '' to the " customer service manager '' that these were just " fake '' transactions that shouldn't actually go through, according to the " XXXX customer service rep, '' who assured me I wasn't actually sending real funds ). 

I then was to text images of the XXXX completed transactions to a XXXX " fraud customer service XXXX '' ( XXXX ), and after theyd reviewed them, they were to call me and walk me through a process to " detach '' my phone number from the fraudulent XXXX account. And of course I never heard from anyone, and when I tried to call the customer service rep back the number was disconnected, along with the number of the original XXXX XXXX caller. And my money was actually gone. 

I filed a claim with Citibank to recover the scammed funds from the XXXX XXXX transactions, which totaled {$2900.00}, but they denied the claim, saying that because I authorized them through XXXX I could not recover the funds. I've filed an appeal and am still awaiting a reply. 

NOTE : All the above numbers are now disconnected, EXCEPT for the number associated with the customer service managers XXXX account, XXXX. That number is live and was answered by a person on XXXX XX/XX/year>.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with non-monetary relief