Consumer complaint received 2025-05-16 00:00:00
Product: Credit card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Problem with a purchase shown on your statement — Credit card company isn't resolving a dispute about a purchase on your statement
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: NJ

Complaint narrative:
This compliant is being filed against Bank of America ( Credit Card Fraud ) regarding the Bank 's failure to : 1. Keep the cardholders ' financial information ( and PII/NPI ) secure and private, by allowing the credit card data, specifically cardholders ' credit card, CVV and expiration numbers to be compromised and exposed to be used to place fraudulent charges ; 2. Properly stop fraudulent charges when identified and reported ; 3. Provide secure customer service, by assisting a fraudster impersonating the cardholder ( s ) clear a fraud charge ; 4. Act in good faith with regard to seeking a reversal of charges with the merchants involved ; 5. Work with law enforcement in seeking out the fraudsters who placed the charges ; 6. Provide a secure transaction approval system through the use of an unsecure and risky text based approval system that can be easily manipulated by fraudsters and relying on that unsecure system to place the financial burden of large fraudulent charges on the cardholders ; 7. Provide secure offshore customer service and operations in allowing the cardholders personal and financial information to be exposed for fraudulent purposes ; and 8. Provide competent customer service guidance when it was communicated to the Bank, by the cardholders, that fraudsters are clearly manipulating the Bank 's operations and data. 

The Bank 's bad faith, poor customer service and negligence in exposing the cardholders ' credit card information, as outlined above, led to {$18000.00} of fraud charges being placed on the cardholders ' credit card, and the Bank is determining unilaterally that the cardholders are solely liable for these fraud charges, even though the Bank 's operations and systems directly led to the improper processing of the fraudulent charges and that the cardholders did not make the charges nor receive the goods/services purchased. 

This is a summary of the facts : On XX/XX/year> a fraudster, impersonating the cardholder, placed a fraudulent charge on the cardholder 's account for airline tickets. In addition to placing the charge, the fraudster called Bank of America 's Call Center and impersonated the cardholder in order to get the charge cleared by the Bank 's system. From that call, the Bank call center representative assisted the fraudster as if she was the cardholder. 
In order to submit the charge, the fraudster needed the full credit card number, the credit card CVV code and the credit card expiration date. The cardholders know that the this initial fraudulent charge was placed because the cardholders saw the charge appear as " pending '' on the Bank of America online/website customer activity. This charge would not have made it to this pending stage without the entry of the full card number/CVV and expiration date. 

This card was previously not used for almost 5 years with ANY merchant and the card statements support the non-usage of the card by the legitimate cardholders up to this date. These statements are provided to support this complaint. Outside of the credit card, the only system that has all three sets of numbers ( card number/CVV/Expiry date ) is Bank of Americas internal systems . This is de facto evidence that the Bank 's systems were compromised, either by internal employees or by hackers and that these numbers were provided to the fraudsters who placed these charges, either inadvertently or intentionally in furtherance of the fraud, by the Banks own employees, or were attained by a hack of Bank of Americas systems. 

Subsequent to the initial XX/XX/XXXX fraud charge, the cardholders diligently reported a number of additional fraudulent charges ( placed with various XXXX  XXXX merchants ) several times to the Banks Customer Service and XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. In these communications/calls, the customer service that the Bank provided was consistently poor, with wrong information, guidance and a lack of urgency being evidenced by the Banks employees. The Bank either provided incorrect guidance, such as telling the cardholders themselves to call the merchants to seek a reversal of the fraud charges and the Bank Representatives refused to block pending additional fraud charges that occurred ( again in XXXX ) because the " call center was closing for the day '' and claiming that the " fraud claim and reporting of the fraud would protect the cardholders against the additional fraudulently placed charges. '' The Bank 's failure to block/mitigate the several fraud charges that occurred in the days subsequent to the initial fraud charge placed on XX/XX/XXXX, ballooned the total fraudulent charges to over {$18000.00}. 

After the fraudster placed charges exceeding {$18000.00} ( most of the balance was made up of expensive airline ticket purchases ), the Bank began its fraud claim dispute process and claimed to investigate this matter. The cardholders also reported the fraud charges to their local police. In addition, several times during the Bank 's supposed investigation, the cardholders told the Bank Representatives that they were gathering evidence to assist in the investigation and that they needed the Bank to contact the merchant to reverse or attain the identity of the airline ticket holders in order to assist the police in their investigation. Although being assured by Bank 's Customer Service representatives that their fraud investigators would contact the police and take 90 days to research the matter, the Bank, on XXXX occasions over a 70 day period, closed their investigation, stating that " the cardholder approved the charges on the cardholder 's device, '' even though a Bank representative advised the cardholder that the Bank approved the charges and assisted a fraudster impersonator on XX/XX/XXXX. Each time the cardholders demanded that the Bank reopen its investigation. 

In its investigations, the Bank acted in bad faith by not allowing a Bank investigators to speak to the cardholders to outline what the Bank was doing in reviewing this fraud case. Did they talk to the assigned police officer who is investigating the case? Did they try to reverse the charges by engaging with the merchant to potentially block the use of the airline tickets? Did the Bank identify the airline ticket holders ' names in order to potentially track down the fraudsters? Why did the Bank consistently allow several charges to process/finalize and thereby fail to mitigate the damages subsequent to the initial fraud charge, after the cardholders advised the Bank that pending fraud charges were showing in the card activity data? Did the Bank review if their systems were compromised either externally or internally through unauthorized access to the cardholder credit card and security numbers? The cardholders have no clue as to what the Bank did in its review, outside of a generic letter stating that the cardholder " approved the charges. '' A sample copy of one such investigation and dispute closure letter is attached to this compliant. 

The cardholders are looking to have the fraudulent charges reversed permanently by the Bank, due to Bank of America 's bad faith in investigating this matter, for the Bank 's negligence in allowing a compromise of the cardholders ' credit card number, CVV and expiration date, in not providing proper security of the cardholders ' PII/NPI, for establishing and maintaining unsecure approval systems that are easily manipulated by fraudsters, and using such unsecure systems as their rationale for not crediting cardholders for fraudulently placed charges that the Bank facilitated XXXX for assisting a fraudster/cardholder impersonator on a phone call to approve charge ( s ), and for consistently providing incorrect guidance and assistance in this fraud dispute matter. 
Bank of America 's response to this complaint needs to address every point being made by the cardholders in this complaint.

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