Consumer complaint received 2025-05-09 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: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: CA

Complaint narrative:
My wife and I used our Citi credit cards to invest a total of {$30000.00} as follows : {$5000.00} on XX/XX/year> ( https : XXXX ) {$5100.00} on XX/XX/year> ( https : XXXX ) {$5500.00} on XX/XX/year> ( https : XXXX ) {$9500.00} on XX/XX/year> ( https : XXXX ) {$5000.00} on XX/XX/year> ( https : XXXX ) We realized too late that XXXX is a scam. The XXXX website purports to be XXXX XXXX XXXX founded by XXXX XXXX and the XXXX family. The real XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX ( XXXX ) founded by the XXXX family is https : XXXX The XXXX family created XXXX XXXX XXXX to sell the XXXX $ XXXX cryptocurrency token. The real XXXX has nothing to do with the fake XXXX website. XXXX does not represent XXXX or the XXXX family and is not affiliated with XXXX XXXX XXXX in any way. The XXXX family does not sell precious metals or anything other than $ XXXX crypto tokens on the XXXX website. The real $ XXXX token sale ended in XXXX when a large buyer purchased the last XXXX $ XXXX tokens as you can see on the XXXX  token sale page XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. The XXXX scammers sell {$35.00} XXXX silver rounds for {$190.00} each, and {$640.00} XXXX XXXX XXXX for {$4900.00} each, and they justify the inflated prices by claiming that the XXXX rounds and gold stars come with $ XXXX tokens and digital dollars : XXXX $ XXXX tokens and XXXX digital dollars for each XXXX round, and XXXX $ XXXX tokens and XXXX digital dollars for each gold star. These are lies. The scammers can not give their victims $ XXXX tokens because the scammers have no authority on the $ XXXX blockchain, and even if the scammers bought some $ XXXX tokens before the token sale ended in XXXX, the WLFI bylaws prevent purchasers of $ XXXX tokens from transferring or selling their $ XXXX tokens for the indefinite future. But the scammers don't stop at selling nonexistent $ XXXX tokens and digital dollars. They also intercept and steal the precious metals from their victims by sending a thief to wait for the FedEx delivery truck and sign for the delivery. The scammers do this by putting a second name like XXXX XXXX on the address label in addition to the customer 's name. They don't give the customer a tracking number or delivery date, just a very wide delivery window like 2 to 4 weeks. This makes it impossible for the customer to know when the package is out for delivery. The thieves however know exactly when the package is out for delivery. The thief parks near the customer 's house and waits for the XXXX truck to arrive. When the XXXX truck arrives, the thief walks up to the truck, signs for the delivery, and absconds with the package. But the thieves don't steal all of the deliveries of gold and silver. That way they've got a few " satisfied customers '' to use as references and testimonials. In reality those are the customers who are completely asleep, kept in the dark and covered with dung as the mushroom metaphor aptly suggests. The same scammers behind XXXX are operating two other fraudulent websites : trumpgoldreserve.com and rfkpatch.com. The same thieves are behind all three websites. They are foreigners pretending to be based in the XXXX. They speak with a foreign accent that sounds Slavic. Their websites say they accept credit cards but once you are ready to invest they tell you to wire the funds to a bank in XXXX. If you refuse to wire money to a foreign bank, as we did, they will give you the name of a payee in XXXX that you can pay with a credit card. You may think you are safe using a credit card but the thieves have learned that credit card companies will tell you to return the product to the foreign payee in order to reverse the credit card charge, which is irresponsible and outrageous because the credit card companies know that overseas deliveries are easily lost/stolen/denied/bribed etc. They know that American courts and American law enforcement have no jurisdiction overseas. Yet the credit card companies side with the criminals and demand that you attempt to return the product to a foreign address, knowing full well that the thieves will simply deny that they received it. The same thieves contacted us about the XXXX XXXX, the XXXX XXXX XXXX, and the XXXX precious metals. The XXXX XXXX that they sell for {$890.00} consists of a few inexpensive nutritional supplements and so-called " stem cells '' which are undoubtedly bogus. The terms page for both the XXXX patch and the XXXX XXXX XXXX say all sales are final. That alone should tell you it's a scam. The XXXX terms at least say the product can be returned but what you don't realize until it's too late is that the merchant is a liar and a thief who will simply deny that the return was received -- it " disappeared '' somewhere overseas. Their is no physical office address on their websites. The support phone numbers and email addresses on their websites don't work. They use burner phones and gmail addresses when they contact you. But the real problem is that Citi is allowing the criminals to get away with these crimes. The Citi credit card investigators have decided to allow the XXXX thieves to keep our {$30000.00} despite the mountain of irrefutable evidence of fraud and theft that we have provided. Every law school student knows that fraud vitiates contract agreements, but Citi 's legal department apparently does not understand this simple principle of contract law. Or Citi is simply unwilling to give up the lucrative fees it collects from these scammers. What is needed is a class action lawsuit to subpoena the records of defrauded XXXX customers not only from Citi but from all other credit card vendors, and force these corrupt credit card companies to disgorge the illegal profits they have made by shielding criminals.

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