Consumer complaint received 2025-02-14 00:00:00
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service — Mobile or digital wallet
Issue: Fraud or scam — 
Company: WELLS FARGO & COMPANY
State: CA

Complaint narrative:
XX/XX/year> - XXXX received a phone call from " WELLS FARGO '' at XXXX, they said they were calling to report suspicious activity on my account but first needed to verify they were speaking to the right person. Instead of asking me to provide any information, they listed off my name, bank account number, social security number, email address and mailing address. All were corrrect except for my mailing address, so I provided them with a new address. I got a confirmation message from Wells Fargo saying my address had been updated. I thought it was a bit strange that they read out my social security number, but considering I never got an alert that said " someone is trying to access your online account, here 's the code '' I believed it was legitimately someone from the bank. They continued to say that they noticed suspicious charges on my account in the form of several charges around {$900.00} to someone in XXXX, Texas. They gave me a name of the person who charged the account, i did not recognize any it and they confirmed they would walk me through steps to reverse the charges. 

I said it sounded a bit strange and they assured me this was Wells Fargo calling, even told me to look up the number they were calling from and I would see it is a Wells Fargo number. I looked it up on my phone and it was connected to a Wells Fargo branch office in XXXX XXXX. 

They told me that the police were looking into the matter and they needed me to zelle a number the specific amounts that were deducted in order for them to locate where the money had originally gone and for the charges to be reversed. 

After following the steps, they said asked me if I wanted my money back and then laughed at me and hung up. I had obviously been scammed into believing this was Wells Fargo attempting to provide a service to keep my account safe, when in fact it was them who had compromised it. 

My complaint covers two main issues : 1. Wells Fargo is responsible for allowing scammers to access my sensitive personal information : when the scammer called me he was already in my wells fargo account details and had all my personal information. I never gave them any information aside from a new mailing address, but they proactively read my all the private bank details and my sensitive personal information including my social security number. Clearly there was a breach of Wells Fargos systems where i trusted my information would be safe, otherwise they would not have been able to update my mailing address within the wells fargo system. They did not give me any solution to this or offer to help other than telling me I would have to close my checking account and open a new one.

2. They would not provide me information about where my money went, nor would they look into it : I filed a claim which was returned by mail saying that they investigated and they found no case of fraud. The scam involved me sending via XXXX money to specific phone numbers which are tied to bank accounts, but they would not provide any of that information to me so that I could look into the fraud myself or report it to the police. They also deleted all the activity described above from my XXXX transaction history so that I could not dig deeper into the phone numbers or identities in question. They have a record of where that {$3000.00} went as they have access to the account information associated with the scam XXXX accounts, yet they claimed they could not provide me with any further information. 

As a result, I lost all the money in my bank account and was not able to pay rent or many of my bills, my credit score was affected along with overdraft charges to my account.

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 explanation