How Bank of America Gave Away My Money | Hacker News Reader

How Bank of America Gave Away My Money

soraven.com

640 pointsalienchow250 comments

If you know a little bit about legal procedure dealing with something like this shouldn't be too hard.

You'd file against your local bank based on the address of the branch you go to for an order to show cause hearing where they are tasked to show up and show cause as to why the transfer of money should go forward. You'd state the basic grounds of mistaken identity, propose a temporary restraining order barring any further action until the case is heard, and go to the court for a judge to sign the order and give instructions for service.

Once it gets on everyone's radar as a conflicting court proceeding (rather than a customer service complaint) they'd likely quickly get to the bottom of it.

It sounds really hard but it isn't, most courts in bigger cities at least will have an office where you can make an appointment to get free volunteer legal help.

Yes this will burn a couple slightly frustrating afternoons getting it together but it's eminimently possible to do, and an interesting exercise for the average person who enjoys learning how things work.

> If you know a little bit about legal procedure dealing with something like this shouldn't be too hard.

Well, responses on here vary from "sue the bank, it's their fault," to "contact/sue the LASD, it's their fault" to "contact the plaintiff's lawyers, they'll fix it" to "contact the defendant's lawyers, they'll pay for it or else."

So clearly, this is likely to cost more than a couple afternoons.

One day, a sheriff showed up at my home and confiscated my guns. Turns out some lunatic that I don't even know had filed a domestic abuse restraining order against me and the state I was in grants a temporary order by default. Took 2 months to resolve this and cost me about $6k in legal fees. Took several months to get my guns back.

While that's not the same as "you're not actually the guy named in the lawsuit", it illustrates how disruptive this kind of thing can be.

Absolutely. And he's lucky it was just $4k. What of it was $100k and included money you needed to live and pay the mortgage with? This type of negligence by the bank is downright scary.

It's not clear to me that it's the bank's fault. The court must've done some kind of discovery to send the bank a garnish order. So was the bank lazy and just took money from a similar named account without checking the details? Or did the court identify the wrong defendant and issue a garnish order for the wrong person?

If the details of the story are true, there is no way for the bank to be completely innocent here and it doesn't matter whether the police or court messed up. Upon receiving a legal order for some customer, the bank should at least make sure the name, SSN, and mailing address match before zeroing out the account.

Either way, BofA should still have given the customer sufficient notification to enable them to object before taking the money.

I wouldn't be surprised if they are specifically barred from doing this to avoid having defendants liquidate their assets right before the confiscate order comes through.

It's not like the only options are "take the money" and "let the customer liquidate it".

The middle ground is "notify the customer and freeze the accounts while they're responding".

Which is no different than just taking the money. You can't get a loan against a frozen account, you can't use a frozen account to buy groceries or pay your mortgage, and you can't get an extension on your credit cards because your account is frozen.

Swap out "took my money" with "froze my account" in the article and 90% of the comments here would be identical.

It is substantially different.

One is an administrative hold that can be lifted by the bank. The other is an inter-bank transfer process that maybe has to go through the courts. The reason the person in this article has had such a hard time is that he has to convince more than just his bank that they screwed up because they don't have his money any more.

You're right actually. The post doesn't mention whether it was the bank or the sheriffs office that goofed on the name. He also mentions something about his credit union being more competent. That suggests it may have been the sheriff's office that mixed up the names if two separate banks had garnish orders.

It seems clear that its not a mistake of one party or the other, clearly its a mistake on both parts. The Sheriff should have checked better and the bank should have double checked.

I'm sorry that happened to you. You shouldn't lose our 2nd amendment rights based on unsubstantiated claims that you can't defend against. Very unfair and not right.

Unfortunately, this is the law in California. But it should be changed, because it's unconstitutional and it's not right.

> You'd file [...] an order to show cause hearing where > they are tasked to show up and show cause as to why > the transfer of money should go forward.

The article very plainly describes how he was not notified until after the transfer of money already occurred.

Then you'd file an OSC with a draft order to restore the money to the account. The only catch would be convincing a judge to sign it, which if you stated the basic facts reasonably clearly and had a little help making sure formatting was correct would likely not be a problem.

The overall point is that courts are just another system with a ton of formal rules and procedures, but for the average programmer/hacker type it's really not that hard to learn the basics of how things work and make some headway.

People have a slightly irrational fear of the court system (only slightly irrational, it is terrifying) that tends to be paralyzing. Walking in the front door of the court and asking for help, plus a little online research, can help quite a bit. There's quite a few options available to your average smart citizen who wants to navigate it alone.

It doesn't help that the guy talked to over a dozen people who all passed the buck and gave him everything from useless and misleading advice to a shrug and a "not my problem".

In the end, he couldn't find a single lawyer who was both qualified and interested in his case. Everybody was either out of their jurisdiction or uninterested in such a small case.

File it anyway. Get it on their radar.

In California, I don't believe you can file against a local branch. You'd need to file against BofA at their central legal location for service, which I believe is in LA. However, I think (though not sure) you can still file the case itself in the county where you reside.

I know this because I recently filed a small claims case that included Chase as a defendant, and this was the process.

The small (<10k) amount of money makes this a bit difficult because that typically falls within the realm of small claims, and they don't move quickly with court dates. My hearing date was about 3 months after filing. Maybe there are special procedures for things that have to move quickly like this?

> Maybe there are special procedures for things that have to move quickly like this?

Yes that's what I'm proposing. I don't know CA specifically but in general courts have what's called a "special term" or an "ex parte part" or something similar. In that court a judge is sitting during the day and is available to sign orders that relate to exigent circumstances, which this would qualify for.

Typically you can file an OSC and/or a TRO and seek temporary relief while you make arrangements to actually begin a proper suit. It's very commonly used, for example to prevent a business partner from cleaning out an office full of jointly owned supplies, or preventing the auction of a property when there's a dispute over ownership.

It's very different from the long slow plodding process by which an actual court case proceeds. But it's applicable here since this isn't an actual court case, it's mistaken identity. Once it comes to everyone's attention formally, with a judge's order, it's almost certain to end right there.

I know how to handle these dumb fucks. (I had a Mortgage with them, that makes me an expert)

I had a problem with them coughing up an escrow refund check, although there is much more to the story that would have most of you boiling.

I filed complaints with a total of 3 agencies and received my check via FedEx Priority overnight not long after. Suck it, BofA.

* Filed complaint with CFPB * Filed with Texas State Attorney General's Office (Insert your state here) * Filed complaint with Office of the Comptroller of Currency (HelpWithMyBank.gov)

Trust me. If you file a very well articulated complaint to each of these entities, they will feel the heat and resolve it.

I hope this information helps you alienchow, and many others.

CFPB was just called out [1, 2] by Rep. Jeb Hensarling as unaccountable and a "rogue agency". The head of CFPB responded in an interview this morning [3].

Mr. Jiang, you'd better get your complaint in now before they're disbanded!

[1] http://www.npr.org/2017/04/05/522756745/head-of-consumer-fin...

[2] http://www.npr.org/2017/02/24/516983751/rep-jeb-hensarling-c...

[3] http://www.npr.org/2017/04/06/522826544/consumer-financial-p...

Republicans increasingly find these government ombudsmans as rogue. Companies should get to accost their customers, and if the customers don't like it, take business elsewhere. If a contract is violated, hire a lawyer and sue. Good people have money and can hire good lawyers. If you don't have money, get in line for a pro bono lawyer. It's completely reasonable and fair to have to wait years for this; afterall rich people are better, and therefore they shouldn't have to wait their turn for justice, they can simply buy it. Justice is a product.

That's basically where Republican ideology is at right now. It's openly hostile to anti-trust and anti-fraud law. Without those things, trust burns down. And that leads to dark places. But pretty much I think Republicans are that short sighted and stupid. They're totally consumed by the pursuit of money and exploitation, and are drunk on it.

It says they want to replace the head guy and restructure the agency. This is why:

> A 2013 press release from the House Services Committee (HSC) criticized the CFPB for what was described as a "radical structure" that "is controlled by a single individual who cannot be fired for poor performance and who exercises sole control over the agency, its hiring and its budget." Moreover, the HSC alleged a lack of financial transparency, lack of accountability to Congress or the President, and expressed particular concern about excessive travel costs and a $55 million renovation of CFPB headquarters that was more costly than "the entire annual construction and acquisition budget for GSA for the totality of federal buildings".

Of course it sounds bad that they want to shut down a 'consumer protection' agency. But those sound like legitimate concerns. At a minimum a restructuring sounds like a good thing.

And then we look at the chairman of the committee, Jeb Hensarling, when the report was released:

>A vocal critic of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), he has received $183,400 from the payday lending industry since the beginning of 2013 (directly and through his political action committee), according to a report from the nonprofit Americans for Financial Reform.

Why does Wikipedia mention his bribes from the payday lending industry? Because the CFPB is trying to make payday lenders not knowingly put their customers in inescapable debt[2,3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeb_Hensarling

[2] https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/consumer-f...

[3] http://www.consumerreports.org/consumer-financial-protection...

How surprising. Not sure if that disproves the entire contents of the study done by the bi-partisan committee, but it's not adding any credibility.

Which saddens me as there are legitimate problems in many of these regulatory agencies, but sadly the guys who fight against this stuff are often merely pawns for the interests of mega-corps. Rather than the interests of the general public and small/medium businesses owners who are most affected by bad policy. There's a reason only 6 mega banks are left following the 2008 crisis and hardly any small regional banks any more :/.

The reason there aren't more regional banks is precisely because of all the regulations. I have represented numerous small banks over the last decade. Every single one of them has been sold to larger banks because they cannot compete due to the regulations, which require at least one, and more typically two compliance officers just to deal with the red tape created by the CFPB. These people don't contribute anything to the bottom line. The only way to become profitable is to get big enough that these compliance costs can be spread over more borrowers/account holders.

> The reason there aren't more regional banks is precisely because of all the regulations. I have represented numerous small banks over the last decade. Every single one of them have been sold to larger banks because they cannot compete due to the regulations, which require at least one, and more typically two compliance officers just to deal with the red tape created by the CFPB. These people don't contribute anything to the bottom line. The only way to become profitable is to get big enough that these compliance costs can be spread over more borrowers/account holders.

Counterpoint, a bank fraudulently sold a mortgage loan to Fannie Mae on a property I owned and I got it resolved via the CFPB instead of needing a lawyer and a court case.

I'm not sure why "red tape" is a problem when it protects me from having 6 figure sums stolen from me by a private corporation without needing the court system.

There's no question the CFPB has helped some consumers resolve disputes. The parent's complaint was about the death of small banks. That has been caused directly by the cost to comply with new regulations.

Banks (including small banks) frequently make errors that they stubbornly resist resolving without a gun to their head. Hence, the regulation that kills many of them.

If they were capable of self-regulating to a reasonable degree, the political pressure to create those regulations never would have existed. If you can't afford to fix your mistakes, you shouldn't be in business in the first place.

That is the fatal flaw in many of these anti-regulation arguments. Self-regulation doesn't exist in capitalism outside of the court system and you can't expect poor people to afford to fight in court every time there is a problem.

That's certainly an interesting take. In all of my dealings with small banks, it was always easy to get an EVP on the phone to sort out problems. That's now virtually impossible dealing with large banks. Frequently I find that even people whose titles indicate they should have power to solve small problems frequently don't. They need to get committee approvals for anything that isn't already governed by their procedure manual. As with any organization, as banks get bigger and bigger, they have less ability to self-regulate and quickly fix mistakes.

BTW, it's not that anyone who has problems with things like the CFPB is necessarily ANTI-REGULATION. It's just hard to grasp how much regulation exists if you're not involved in this industry. And you need to consider the consequences of this kind of regulation. You can't complain that banks are too big to fail if you're simultaneously implementing regulation (even with the best of intentions) that is directly driving banks to get bigger and bigger.

> That's certainly an interesting take. In all of my dealings with small banks, it was always easy to get an EVP on the phone to sort out problems. That's now virtually impossible dealing with large banks. Frequently I find that even people whose titles indicate they should have power to solve small problems frequently don't. They need to get committee approvals for anything that isn't already governed by their procedure manual. As with any organization, as banks get bigger and bigger, they have less ability to self-regulate and quickly fix mistakes.

The EVP (or at least someone with that title) basically told me their records were correct and to pound sand. It was escalated pretty quickly when I made it clear I had a full record of my previous contacts with the bank (including a bank employee agreeing in writing I had cancelled the application) and the dollar amount was large enough I was not going to let it go.

> BTW, it's not that anyone who has problems with things like the CFPB is necessarily ANTI-REGULATION. It's just hard to grasp how much regulation exists if you're not involved in this industry. And you need to consider the consequences of this kind of regulation. You can't complain that banks are too big to fail if you're simultaneously implementing regulation (even with the best of intentions) that is directly driving banks to get bigger and bigger.

Honestly, I'd rather have _well regulated banks_ than no big banks. I don't care if some bank has 15% of the market. I care that there are at least enough competitors (10+) in the market for it to be a competitive market.

But yeah, from my perspective the CFPB is really just a separate arbitration process that keeps people from having to go to court to dispute issues + some post-2008-meltdown regulations. Sure, some problem are excessive but 90% of them likely are not.

> with the red tape created by the CFPB

I won't disagree with regulations necessarily, but the rate of small banks closing has actually gone down since 2011 when the CFPB was created. It was higher during 2000-2008.

Bank consolidations predate the CFPB. And some of the banks that seem to have had the most issues would not be called small by anyone (e.g. Santander)

Define "closing". None of the banks I represented "closed". They have all been swallowed up by larger banks.

its not even a little surprising

it sounds a lot like you just regurgitated Republican talking points

This thank you.

Speaking of partisanship, the NPR links above are just as equally regurgitating democrat talking points. Lacking any type of critical analysis of the agency and instead focused entirely on the silly talking points of the republican guy with some added snark.

NPR is hard left, I at least quoted a study from a bi-partisan agency that I found on Wikipedia

> NPR is hard left

you can't be serious. NPR is what the American media complex calls "liberal" which should be translated to "center-right by global and historical standards, but left of the extreme right wing of contemporary American politics".

I'm curious as to how you came to the conclusion that the US was center-right by global standards. Are you genuinely broadly familiar with all the governments of South America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia? Or are you just comparing it to a small handful of governments in North America and Western Europe?

NZ is more left-wing than the US, though my hunch is that the left-wing here is much more US influenced than the right. IE, because the US dominates English-speaking media, and the left dominates US media (or at least the exported US media), that the local left seems to largely be driven by the issues and talking points of the american left. We even studied the US Civil Rights movement in our state run history class.

this might be instructive

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5oczc7g4979s95k/the%20political%20...

now place on Overton Window (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window) on that chart such that its left end goes over Steven Pinker and its right end goes over Donald Trump and you have the political spectrum, as it is currently discussed in American mainstream media.

I'm going to go ahead and ignore something so incredibly biased that it places Barack Obama and Joseph Stalin on the "far right". That's la-la land extremist.

it puts Obama on "the right" and Stalin on "the extreme right". that sounds correct to me.

you should actually read it and think about why it is constructed that way. if your first reaction to seeing a perspective you're unfamiliar with is "that's la-la land extremist" then you might have a bias problem.

What makes you think I'm not familiar with the far left perspective? I'm very familiar with it.

If you think putting communist dictator Joseph Stalin on the extreme right means you have a nuanced, holistic view of the left-right spectrum then yes, you're a moonbat extremist. You'll note that right wing extremists will do a similar trick, and claim Hitler was a leftist.

please, hear me out. you're already defensive and dismissive and I'm asking you to suspend that for a minute and think about it.

where did you learn that Stalin is left wing? Who told you that? Is it because the USSR was nominally communist (in some strange version of communism in which totalitarian state capitalism is the actual system, anyway) and so any leader of nominally communist nation is left wing because communism is left wing?

Now compare the actual policies and actions of Stalin to the policies and actions of other leaders that he is most similar to. I think it's pretty uncontroversial to say that Stalin's regime was a brutal, repressive, totalitarian dictatorship. A lot like Hitler's regime actually.

Now when you're drawing a political spectrum do you think we ought to pay attention to abstract statements about ideology or should we pay more attention to policies and actions? Is a political spectrum best organized by abstract ideology (in which case, yes, Nazism is left wing, it was a socialist party after all) or by what actually happened?

What's more "moonbat"? Putting two similar leaders (Hitler and Stalin) on opposite ends of a spectrum or putting them near each other on that spectrum?

There's really only one flaw with the chart that I linked. It's that it continues to use the terms "left" and "right" even though it has rearranged groupings to match policies and actions. Would you feel differently about it if instead of left it said "liberation" and instead of right it said "domination"?

do you actually listen to NPR? they are hard left. most if not all of their stories are SJW-type stories. I can't even listen to them anymore.

if you think discussion of what is currently fashionable amongst naive Yale undergrads and partisan media sites like Huffington Post constitutes "hard left" you haven't seen "hard left".

It continues to disturb me that there are so many people in America that have no idea what the real political spectrum is. Basically the takeaway should be this: if the discussion is something that was brought up AT ALL by the Clinton campaign it is not "hard left". It's merely to the left of the Republicans, but then, almost everything is.

ok, fair point I guess. I still don't like it. can you give me any examples that in your opinion are "hard left" then?

Compare and contrast to the board of governors of the Federal Reserve...

> Of course it sounds bad that they want to shut down a 'consumer protection' agency. But those sound like legitimate concerns. At a minimum a restructuring sounds like a good thing.

If only the concerns weren't a bad joke disconnected from reality.

He can be fired for poor performance (inefficiency) and the CFPB is hardly the only organization with this structure. So the idea it is radical and he cannot be fired for poor performance are both lies.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-13/why-trump...

> Here’s the legal background. Most federal agencies count as “executive,” meaning that their heads serve at the pleasure of the president. But some agencies are “independent” -- meaning that by law, the people in charge of them can be removed only for good cause, which Congress often specifies to mean “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

> The Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission are independent agencies -- and so is the CFPB. Under the law, Cordray’s five-year term extends until July 2018.

> Both Republican and Democratic presidents have not loved the idea of independent agencies, operating outside of their daily control. But in 1935, the Supreme Court unanimously agreed that the Constitution gives Congress the power to create such entities. The court has stuck with that position ever since -- and for decades no president has even tried to remove the heads of independent agencies

----

> Moreover, the HSC alleged a lack of financial transparency, lack of accountability to Congress or the President, and expressed particular concern about excessive travel costs and a $55 million renovation of CFPB headquarters that was more costly than "the entire annual construction and acquisition budget for GSA for the totality of federal buildings".

https://www.gsa.gov/portal/content/128814

> GSA Announces $947 Million Courthouse Investment Plan

https://www.gsa.gov/portal/mediaId/128818/fileName/Courthous...

> Toledo, Ohio

> New Courthouse Annex / Ashley U.S.Courthouse Renovation

> GSA’s plan allocates

> $97,784,000

One court house is almost double the quoted number and the "Courthouse construction budget" over 10 years is ~$94.7 million / year.

https://www.gsa.gov/graphics/staffoffices/FY2013_CONGRESSION...

For 2013 btw:

> $ 8,619,098,000

$8 billion dollar budget request

> GSA requests $8,619 million in New Obligational Authority (NOA) for the Federal Buildings Fund.

They had an $8 billion dollar budget and this joker is claiming it was the entire annual budget of the GSA? lol

These "issues" are all bullshit.

It's a presidential appointed position like secretary of state of course it's got no accountability to congress.

Lack of financial transparency? Vague and propogandish. Excessive travel costs? Vague and propogandish.

Expensive renovation of headquarters more than GSA? (Insert random agency that it cost more than here.). THE GSA SAID THE COSTS WERE IN LINE WITH OTHER RENOVATION PROJECTS.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-07-10/republica...

Take your republican astroturfing brainwashed conservative zombie rhetoric somewhere else or at least have something (non-Breibart) to back up all of your bullshit claims.

The CFPB is critical organization to help the little guy and one of the only resources they have to fight massive organizations taking advantage of them.

I tried to upvote you here but it's not possible.

Thank you!

You're spouting bullsh*t.

Yep, with the way things are going now, you can expect consumer protections to disappear and for companies like BofA to be able to steal your money left and right. (this isn't sarcasm, sadly)

It's only "rogue" because it actually helps people.

This is totally the way to go. The cost for their compliance department to deal with a set of complaints will far out weight the money they owe you.

Also, switching to a smaller regional bank if you have the possibility is a good choice.

Remember Bank of America is the bank that took all the farms from the farmers during the Great Depression.

I received several phone calls from their Regulatory complaints/compliance department. Played phone tag with them for a few days, until I finally just left them a message instructing them to refer to the resolution on my complaint.

They actually give you a field to fill out on the agency websites:

"What would you like to see happen as a result of this complaint?"

Basically just said send me my money. They held onto it for more than 6 months.

What is laughable is before I got fed up dealing with lower level employees and managers, I had them telling me to consult legal counsel - over an $1,800 check.

Yeah pay an attorney $1,800 to represent me .. to receive $1,800! Makes sense of BofA! Why didn't I think of that?

It's amazing how well that stuff works when dealing with big companies. Years ago I had an issue with Dish. Spent hours on the phone getting passed around to different people who would give me their left pinky to avoid resolving the issue. Finally filed a complaint with the BBB and within a week got a phone call that the issue was being resolved (and the person making the call was not happy about it).

The CFPB is pretty awesome. I will try that next time I need to resolve something.

Here's a trick I have used in the past to deal with a large USA financial company...

- call corporate Headquarters

- Ask for the Chairman of the Board's office

- When they ask why, just say you only need to leave a message with their executive assistant

- when you get the EA on the line, say you'd like to complain, and have made a good faith effort to go through normal channels, but now your are pissed that the company has <thing that could get bad press if it got picked up by the media>

- that has gotten my stuff fixed twice, once to get debt a shady debt collector off my back (2009 was a rough year), and another to get an unpaid invoice paid

Basically, when a company screws up by taking your money, they don't want to draw the wrong kind of attention. "<Financial institution> makes mistake it can't (can't, not won't) fix" projects incompetence, which is a direct assault on the reputation of trust, stability, and prestige. No bank could survive if the proverbial fine print included "most of the time, we don't lose your money!"

Submit to all 3. That is what worked for me. (That is, if you are dealing with a Financial institution.)

How to handle this: 1) Get your story on the front page of a mid-large news aggregator. 2) Wait.

He should be calling up the plaintiff's lawyers, not BOA. Lawyers don't want to collect only to have to give it back. Find out who they are and call them. Any other attorneys involved as well. Once they have proof the money should not be given out, any ethical attorney would be very wary of handing out money.

It's also likely the money will be sitting in the trust account of an attorney before it actually gets dispersed, so he has more time that way. Contacting the bank for help in the legal system is totally the wrong way to solve this. They've given the money away and can't actually get it back even if they tried. They're a useless avenue at the moment.

This would be my advice as well; talk to the Plaintiff's attorney. I have all my business accounts at B of A. I shopped around, and they have the best online banking services. Part of the problem is arcane banking laws. Since I opened the accounts at B of A in Texas and now live in Seattle. Even though I walk into the B of A office here in Seattle, my accounts are "out of state" and require all sorts of extra paperwork.

Is there no way for you to change the home branch of your account? I can imagine it being a giant hassle if the routing number would change. At least neither WA nor TX have state income tax.

In Canada, the branch number is part of it so that would definitely have to change but the federal government has sole jurisdiction over banks so out-of-province isn't an issue.

Not bad, contact the defendants attorney in writing, then inform them that you will be notifying the bar as well

No need to wait that long, just call them and say you'll fax over the proof. Lawyers don't want to be a party to a lawsuit later over a few thousand dollars if they might clearly lose it.

They will keep some of his money as fees and give some out to clients, so then if they can't get it back from clients, depending on the rules, they might have to come up with it all themselves. No regular attorney wants that, nor do they want the hassle.

Just call them all up and say this money isn't from one of the defendants, it's an accidental transfer from an unrelated third party and they will be getting it back.

Sure, make the call, but send the email and the letter. Don't allow unnecessary delays because "you didn't notify them properly."

He should find a lawyer friend to help him out. And change his attitude 180 degrees.

What I don't get: Why would he pursue some court order he's not a party to? The only logical counterparty to this dispute is BoA. They gave away your money without proper title. That shouldn't hold up in court? That they gave some money to the LA Sheriff’s Department, that would be BoA to recoup.

Trouble is, this guy is a random citizen who doesn't know much about how the law works, and so it hasn't clicked who the correct plaintiff would be for his case.

He'd probably get told who the right parties to lodge a complaint against, if there was any lawyer willing to talk to him for about 15 minutes, but the last half of the article is basically him being bounced all over California by legal professionals who won't speak to him, because he's out of their bailiwick.

It's the XY problem in legal form...

It's the technical mindset: the court order from Southern California is wrong, let's fix it!

Ha, you're right. It's like he was trying to "debug" this problem. PSA dear readers: civil damages are about proximate cause, not root cause.

Shouldn't this be the case though? Isn't that how the population /wants/ the problem to be fixed? Look at various TV BS court dramas where people behave in a way the population expects them to (versus what actually happens... and no, Phoenix Wright isn't an example since it's interactive).

> Why would he pursue some court order he's not a party to? The only logical counterparty to this dispute is BoA.

As someone very ignorant in how to handle legal issues, as the story went on I originally thought he had to go through the court system to get his fees returned. It didn't occur to me, until the very end, that it's something he needs to dispute with BoA.

Obviously the author needs to take BoA to small claims court but it took me a little while to realize that so I can understand.

If I got told I had to travel 6 hours to retrieve my money due to someone else's mistake, it would probably take law enforcement to calm the scene I would cause. I'm wondering how much this poor guy was bounced around because he was too much of a gentleman to express his frustration.

The error was committed by the LASD, their response here is wrong:

A few minutes later, she came back with the bad news. “Why didn’t you call earlier? It’s too late for us to withdraw the request. The money was already sent to the court! You need to go down to the courthouse and ask them to show you the court documents.”

It is not his problem what they did with the money, they took it from him plain and simple. The error was on their part and how they correct it on the other end is their problem.

Back in the day when people use MCI for some of their phone services , I got an adder to my phone bill from ATT (my carrier) for a charge attributed to a John Fox. I called ATT a couple times and pointed out that I'm not John Fox and they tried to tell me to call MCI. MCI used their LEC billing agreement to have ATT collect the fee. At some point I explained that I was not an MCI customer, had no relationship with them and that ATT had actually charged this fee to me, which is incorrect - how they wanted to deal with MCI or John Fox was their problem. They credited my account and I never heard about John Fox again.

EDIT: Actually the comment below by CLPX is better - the bank did this, they took his money and it is THEIR problem not the LASD. My point remains somewhat valid, it's not your problem to chase the money after someone wrongly took it - it's their problem. The bank didn't do a decent job of verification - they went on a partial name match alone apparently (no SSN, no account number, WTF).

Your anecdote about inter-carrier billing is a good one.

It reminds me of a position one of my best friends takes on "identity theft." He asserts it simply doesn't exist.

What bank's call identity theft most of the world calls "Bank Fraud." The banks don't want to eat it - so they lobby congress to pass laws making it your fault if a bad person tricks the bank.

tl;dr: Similar to how banks try to make identity theft your problem when it's really bank fraud.

"Mitchell & Webb Sound - Identity Theft" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E

Exactly: While "identify theft" is worth keeping around to refer to a kind of criminality, at least 90% of the time the real problem is institutions which fail their due-diligence.

Then they deny their negligent role and try to unjustly shift the cost onto their customers. What we actually need (as a society) is better backpressure on this kind of stuff, so that the institutions and processes actually improve at the weak point.

It's a conundrum. He could tell the branch manager to fix it since it was their mistake, but with the low level of competence displayed by said branch manager it is doubtful he would ever see his money again. Maybe try to elevate it to the district manager in the hopes that they can find their ass with both hands?

Not sure if you have small claims court in America. In Canada for losses under 10000$ process is fairly straightforward. You should file and follow the process. If they don't give money back, go to the court and execute writ of seizure. One guy did this.

http://business.time.com/2011/06/06/homeowner-forecloses-on-...

Small claims court is actually mentioned in the Constitution. However, the actual guarantee in the Constitution is for claims of less than $20. All states also allow you to file for larger amounts, usually something like $5000.

I think you're referring to Amendment VII which provides for jury trials in matters greater than $20, not less than. This refers to guarantees of federal civil courts, in which this matter (all parties local to CA?) would likely not fall.

> "In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law."

You are right. Thanks for the correction.

Assuming he's not also under mandatory binding arbitration, a monkey court that will side with BoA's theft of 3 thousand dollar.s

They would say "we had no choice, it was a court order. The sheriff's department is responsible for the mistake."

In theory: the blog's author would counter argue that BoA didn't perform due diligence in checking that the order mentioned the correct person, and even then, they didn't send the notification on time. The court rules against BoA, and it's up to their lawyers to recoup the money.

In practice: BoA pays straight out of their pocket, sends those $3.4K to losses, and shuts this down before the media finds out. And based on the speed of votes this article is getting, they will find out.

Absolutely correct. This is pocket lint to Bank of America. The big banks operate at an absolutely mammoth scale; BoA has 208k employees. More consequential mistakes than this happen by the thousands every day. There is, quite literally, a budget for it.

It is an unfortunate reality for the US that you have to present as a savvy professional, but as soon as BoA is institutionally aware that there is a savvy professional who is at the point of involving a lawyer, I give them ~48 hours to make the decision internally "We're totally paying that" and a total resolution time of under two weeks.

If it were me here, I'd ask for the branch manager at my first visit immediately after getting the run-around from tier 1 CS. I give better-than-even odds that the branch manager can self-resolve this, particularly for a longer-term customer or relationship they'd otherwise have reason to care about. If the branch manager isn't super receptive to that immediately, walk into any lawyer's office and say "I want a letter written to Bank of America saying that they owe me $X plus whatever you charge for the letter." (If you for whatever reason can't afford a lawyer or can't get a lawyer to take you seriously, you can get much of the same effect by saying "Regulation E" on paper. [+])

Your lawyer won't even have to threaten a suit over this. Everyone knows the score here.

(I use to ghostwrite letters to banks. One of my weird hobbies.)

[+] Regulation E governs electronic funds transfers at US financial institutions. People who know that are very dangerous people for banks to annoy, because Regulation E contains a state machine which is very consumer-favorable, and there is an implicit threat of "I bring your operation of the state machine to the attention of a bored regulator who has no joy in their life other than opportunities to hold your feet to the fire for improperly operating state machines."

Man alive, remind me to consult HN next time I'm in a situation like this (unlikely, I know). I admit I'm quite surprised at the level of detailed knowledge on this thread, particularly in this comment.

I'm ... shockingly interested in this bank letter ghostwriting thing. Could you say more?

There exists a message board called "Credit Cards and Consumer Debt" within the Motley Fool. I commented there for a few years on a variety of subjects, under a pseudonym (which is laughably transparent to anyone who knows me but please don't take that as a challenge, HN).

I was originally there because my credit report suddenly got $100k+ of debt added to it due to a series of errors. I researched the CRA and FDCPA and, in the process of doing so, found that forum. Many folks with different fact patterns needed relatively similar resolutions to mine or ones which were predictable based on information I had access to, so I started writing replies like "Yeah just write your bank and tell them $FOO." It turns out that the types of folks who end up deep in credit card debt often have some difficulty in banging out a quick professional letter. I didn't, and I had a lot of free time on my hands, so I drafted perhaps a few hundred letters.

This is one of my more esoteric hobbies, but it has been occasionally useful over the years.

Unfortunately, I think it would have required a second visit.

Until he had confirmation that the court order was for the wrong person; everyone, including the branch manager would have fallen back on "It was a court order. We didn't have a choice."

Armed with the knowledge that it was a court order for a different person with a similar name but different SSN, a stern conversation with the local manager would have probably been enough.

It could be solved in the first visit, since it's not generally sufficient to say "we had some court order" but they'd have to show a copy of that particular court order to him - assuming that it included the wrong SSN, they could have resolved that it's for the wrong person right then and there without contacting the sherif office.

That was the original problem that sent him to the branch. He couldn't view the court order online and it said to go to the branch. The branch manager apparently never gets a copy of the court order and just blindly executes whatever comes in, so they were no help in resolving the issue.

Yes. My grandmother noticed multiple transactions from the web on her account. She does not have a computer. Her local branch did not help her, and told her it was her mistake.

I found the fraud hotline number, called, and explained the situation. They were very helpful, and resolved it.

Fascinating. I love the Internet. Could you expand a little on the ghost writing bit?

> shuts this down before the media finds out. And based on the speed of votes this article is getting, they will find out.

And then what? People are going to just now start hating Bank Of America? I've got some news for you...

Obviously bank didn't even validate SSN:

“Is the last four digit of your SSN not 5189 (not the actual digits)?”

Sounds like brunt of this mistake lies with the bank.

Or who ever drafted the legal order to the bank. Could have been a typo there, and the bank is just following orders.

That would be a hell of a coincidence: "Typo'ed SSN just happens to give someone else who is a customer with the same bank and multiple components of the same name (Cheng Jiang vs Cheng Xian Jiang, IIRC).

If it was just a typo, like the article says, this would be very much like Brazil (with much low stakes though)

A typo that results in a matching social security number?

Unless an incredible coincidence occured, the bank did not match the SSN.

The branch didn't even have a copy of the court order, there is no way they could have matched the SSNs. They were just doing whatever the county clerk told them.

I'm not sure I follow. The legal order required them to withdraw money from someone with a different name and SSN than who was involved in the case?

That's not a winning argument.

Don't mess around with the court, the whole thing is Bank of America's problem, don't let them make it your fault or the courts. They have debited the wrong account, you can prove this; in the UK if this happened and they didn't return me my money I would take them to the small claims court which can be filled in online. Surely California must have this?

Australia has a banking ombudsman that resolves disputes like this, though I've never had reason to use it. There's also a telecommunications ombudsman - it's a magic word whenever the phone companies screw up (a fairly regular occurrence, though less so recently), I just say I'm recording this call to send to the ombudsman and everything is fixed really quickly.

I believe there a sort of government service but the banks/telcos pay for them by each complaint they get charged - it's free for consumers and works well.

I realise it doesn't help the ops current problem but just mentioning it as a good solution.

I had the same problem with one of the biggest french bank. I saw an important withdrawal on my account in a city where I wasn't. I called my bank and I explained the situation. They told me I'll get the money back in one day. I asked if I should change my credit card in case it was hacked, they told me calmy it was just an error on their part because another client had the same last name. I just couldn't believe it.

About 20 years ago on a Saturday I was shopping for a new washer and dryer for a new house. I gave the cashier my Visa card (from my credit union) and was subsequently told that I was over my credit limit. (At the time that card had a $20k limit and no balance.) I used a different card and waited until Monday to contact my CU. They told me I had requested a balance transfer, but when I pressed them they realized that it was a different customer with a similar name (who was overdrawn on all accounts). Somehow the CU clerk decided to use my account because it had enough credit available to complete the request.

I closed all of my accounts at that CU shortly thereafter. (It was actually after a second fiasco where they failed to pay my property tax, but still withdrew the money from my account.)

Somehow cash under the mattress seems safer...

Ultimately, that's what happens when it's a human that gets the final sign off. You can put all the control and checks in place you need, either the human validates the case and events like this happens, or the computer has final authority and people complain about lacking human touch and comprehension and "they know me for decades but I can't get 20 euros out without several proof of identity".

I'm not sure which way I would consider best. I guess as long as banks are stepping up to their errors and fixing them immediately as in your case, I prefer that.

I got a bonus 5k in my account once because a deposit was off by one digit. The bank was very prompt in taking their money back :)

I had something like that happen with a closed credit card. I don't know what the mistake was, but I suddenly had a $6,000 statement credit due to a misapplied payment. When I called to tell them, they offered to send me a check! After I declined the misbegotten windfall, they put in a little effort and figured out where it was supposed to go.

In many contries, if they send you a check, even in error, you are allowed to cash it if you choose. I recommend consulting a lawyer, and keeping it in a seperate account for a while before spending. Local laws vary widely, some jurisdicitions will disagree. Consider local and national laws as they may appy. Ianal.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2012/05/24/bank-er...

Every story I have ever heard, ended with the bank basically saying "You owe us money. Pay us it back in 3 days or we are going to the police"

Seems not a good plan.

Regardless, it wouldn't have been right to keep the money. Especially since doing so probably would have caused problems for the person who made the misrouted payment.

The bank generated that "money" out of thin air. The big scam is that it's all just ones and zeroes.

That's... not how money works.

http://positivemoney.org/how-money-works/how-banks-create-mo...

I'm aware of how fractional reserve banking works. It does not mean that the money is generated "out of thin air."

I've actually never heard a story end that way. Pretty much all of them involve the bank convincing a court that a reasonable person would have recognized the error, and therefore you need to pay up.

Wells Fargo did this to me many years ago from a business account. The State of California issued a seizer for unpaid taxes for another business. In the end I think Wells Fargo told us that our tax ID numbers were similar. We did end up getting the money back from the state of California after about 3 years. We of course never got back the penalties Wells Fargo charged or interest.

Wells Fargo did similar to me too. However, they then deleted all of my account history (I was paperless) and demanded I call their corporate office, refusing to do anything in writing.

Glad you were able to resolve things, I wasn't able to.

This entire fiasco could have been avoided if people were identified correctly. Here's another recent article where simply using "firstname lastname DOB" as a primary key resulted in a collision: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/03/identity-the...

This is horrific, but what a fascinating story and outcome. Thanks for sharing

Discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14022588

I wrote the blog post. It turns out writing a blog post works better than talking to the bank beyond simple catharsis. Just got a call from someone from Bank of America's social media team who credited the money back to my account. Thanks for all the suggestions here!

We see this all the time. Pretty frustrating that you need to create a PR fuss for issues to be addressed.

I will never use Bank of America again, for similar reason.

On two separate occasions they "lost" transfers to the IRS (totaling $40k) that I only discovered when the IRS came after me for failure to pay taxes. I had full receipts from BofA for the transfers that apparently never happened. At least as disconcerting, the reaction of BofA to the situation both times suggested that sending money to /dev/null was a routine occurrence in their organization.

BofA also launders money for gangs, according to the FBI https://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB100014240527023032922045...

They had to pay $17 billion because of the scale to which they institutionalized mortgage fraud http://nypost.com/2014/08/21/bank-of-america-to-pay-record-1...

The other big banks aren't too different... I went with a small, local bank years ago and haven't looked back.

Find a Local Bank http://banklocal.info/

Why not find a credit union instead? Even better than a local bank because their goal isn't to profit off of their members.

According to the article, he also has a credit union - as well as a BoA account which is his current headache.

Likely, there is a dataset on data.gov published by CFPB which consolidates consumer complaints in a federal database.

https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/consumer-complaint-database...

BofA ranks first by the total number of cases which is to be expected given their footprint. What's notable is that BofA has actually improved over time.

https://github.com/axibase/atsd-use-cases/blob/master/Consum...

Consider taking LASD, BofA and the LAPD to small claims court in a single case in Northern California.

All three of them acted together to take the $3.4k, and I suspect there would be a settlement rather than an actual day in court.

It might be too late, but maybe call the BofA fraud department and tell them it was an unauthorized charge. "Unauthorized charge" is like the root password for banks.

It might also be possible to call the judge that handled the case and ask for help.

Based on jury duty selection it is more or less the judge's job to babysit lawyers of varying degrees of competence. The judge's office should at least be able to get you on the line with the right person.

Reminds me a bit of this article -- similar names crossed up in beurocratic negligence.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/03/identity-the...

I read that yesterday too, good article.

Left me thinking that people who give their children names like River Phoenix or Seven Costanza might be on to something.

I don't get how BoA would pay when the SSN didn't match.

But maybe the LASD didn't cite the SSN, but just the bank account that they had erroneously identified. But still, it's mind-boggling that they'd be so sloppy.

It is not shocking at all that the bank had sloppy accounting. You don't get very many highly motivated professionals to sit around an office and help people fill out checking account applications all day. It's a retail gig with a fairly low salary, not much different than running a register at the Gap. If you are doing anything even slightly out of the ordinary you will run into headaches more often than not.

Exactly, the error is on LASD's end most likely. Whether he likes it or not he's going to have to get a lawyer to get this resolved.

If everyone on this thread tweeted his story, he'll get his money back. In the age of social media, the only effective tool we have against corporations is public shaming.

I've found it's best not to get involved in that kind of mob justice when you don't necessarily know all the details.

This case seems pretty legit, but you never know when someone is leaving out important parts of the story that change things entirely!

For something like this, I've no reason to believe small claims court isn't also an effective tool.

Maybe "functional" is a valid adjective, but "effective" is not. If the guy had gotten on a phone with a lawyer, and the lawyer said "All you need to is go to small claims court against x and bring Y" that might have made things possible.

The awful interface of our legal system is one of the key ways that the less wealthy and less educated get an unfair treatment. Any wealthy person would get this reversed and get their legal fees paid for too.

I don't have strong feelings about the word choice - I think we agree on substance.

In The Netherlans, but I suspect it is EU wide, they won't check the name at all when doing an ordinary transfer. And this is all banks.

I doubt that would have helped here, since the bank itself did the matching and picked the wrong account.

EU (IBAN to be exact) bank accounts do have a check digit, so typos tend to be caught and result in a transfer being blocked. More relevantly Dutch banks are going to add name checking in 2017 as an extra protection as well. The exact introduction date will vary per bank.

You mean the IBAN? We've used it to send money back and forth between people and companies all the time. For the most part it works. And if there is a dispute or error it can be reversed.

No. They do not check the name at all. They use the IBAN. They do not verify the IBAN against the corresponding name.

Well, this is not a normal (customer initiated) transfer, that's seizing funds from an account by legal order, which is not really related.

BOA is probably the worst institutions I've ever dealt with and I never even opened an account with them.

I did get to close one I had with them though and that was a very good day for me because I was among the very 1st of many here who did the same and I got to watch what happened to them here from start to end.

They came to Branson Missouri and bought out a well loved local bank where I had my business account. I closed it as soon as I found out. As the new management came and started enforcing BOA policy people learned fast that I and a few others familiar with them weren't bullshitting about them.

Soon, the long time employees of the old bank started leaving because they weren't willing to piss their friends and neighbors for BOA and, of course, they told everyone why they left. Most went to work for one of the several other local banks here, and all their close friends and family moved their money with them.

When the last of those employees were gone everyone here started moving their accounts over to one of the still locally owned banks and in just a few years BOA didn't have hardly anyone left here to screw so they closed their doors and left town.

I will always admire my neighbors here for that. I knew people who let that bank abuse them for decades out in Los Angeles and I could never, not for the life of me, understand why.

Hm ... the bank acted clearly careless, but I am surprised that there is so little blame on the court/sherrif, as they messed up in the first place and then in the end to not really be willing to undo their misstake.

Do we really know it was the court/sheriff who messed up in the first place? Maybe the actual defendant also had a BofA account, and the mixup was entirely by BofA. (Maybe not - I just don't see a means we have to distinguish, from afar).

While BofA has its share of blame to absorb here, the specific issue is the lack of support for unusual names such as names containing whitespace. The issue may affect other banks, big or small. I for instance had once to deal with a banking application not supporting non-US phone numbers for 2FA, and yet positioned to serve customers 24x7 globally.

It's not like unusual name support isn't a common issue, but they also had a unique key that they failed to check - the SSN. The name at stake could have just as easily been Bob Smith.

The issue in this case wasn't a technological one, but a procedural one. Third-party withdrawal due to court proceedings is an exceptional scenario - not a regular one. Managerial staff would have had to sign off. Someone had to explicitly decide to ignore all the conflicting information.

Sure, the SSN wildcarding was totally inappropriate.

Yet another reason not to use one of the big 4 banks. Credit unions and local banks are the way to go.

In case of a financial crisis the big 4 banks are going to get bailed out. Credit unions and local banks maybe.

Bailouts are irrelevant to ordinary customers, what matters is that your account is insured by FDIC or NCUSIF.

It's more likely that the big banks will be bailed in, not bailed out. Which means your money is less safe there.

Also, credit unions have a different insurance scheme than the banks, which insulates them from this.

Finally, credit unions are more aware of possible jeapardy, and so tend to act more prudently.

Sorry, I don't understand, what do you mean by "bailed in"?

A bail-in is when savings are used to finance the bank or the state by turning them into illiquid debt, bank shares, or when they are simply forfeited. This happened in Cyprus in 2013 for example.

If this ever happens in the US it really won't matter where your savings are.

In USA, if savings are under your mattress, they are protected by 2nd Amendment...

This is merely false bravado in this day and age. The police can take your money, if they suspect that it is proceeds of a crime. Lots of money under the bed sounds like proceeds from a drugs deal! You can take a few of them down with you, but it won't end well for you..

As the 4th amendment against seizure of your money is no longer being protected (see: "Civil assert forfeiture"), know that the police may steal the money under your mattress and murder you for attempting to exercise your rights.

Not against being made worthless/illegal to use.

That the bank's creditors have to bear (a part of) the losses.

Repeat after me:"The only clients of a bank are its' shareholders"

Which is precisely why I switched to a credit union over a decade ago and don't plan on ever going back to a bank.

As far as I know, the only correct action is to write a letter detailing the entire situation to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in Washington DC.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet.

Maybe you can elaborate as to why this is the correct course of action? I've never heard of this office.

They are BoA's federal regulator.

A comment on the article advises filing a theft report. This has worked for me twice. The one most relevant to HN:

Crappy payroll company ADP double-debited the quarterly IRS tax payment for payroll. (Luckily I always have payroll checks written out of a payroll-only account, so when the account went negative the bank called me so I could transfer additional money (about a half a million bucks) in and nobody's paycheck bounced). To make a long story short ADP refused to do anything and when I finally got to talk to the district manager he insisted his hands were tied. "I don't know why you keep saying we improperly took your money -- we didn't! The money is at the IRS and in three months you can just declare it as a credit on your next payment. We don't have your money at all." Finally I agreed with him, "you're right! I will stop saying you took your money and will instead use the correct vocabulary, 'grand theft', 'fraud', and 'abuse of power of attorney'. Since you prefer the precise terminology, if the money is not in my account by 2PM (note: that's when the fed wire closes) I'll drive over to the Santa Clara district Attorney's office and swear a complaint."

Oddly enough the money that they supposedly didn't have was in our account by 1pm.

Maybe try suing the bank in small claims court. They were clearly negligent.

I recently went through a similar legal situation to recover basically the same small amount. I find these incidents to be really interesting and oddly beautiful.

Exploring the broken beaurocracy to retrieve your money is a game; when you finally send enough documents and certified letters to satisfy/scare the otherside it's extremely satisfying.

You need to hire a lawyer. It's not fair but that's how this is. This is going to haunt you forever -- not just this account! You have to do so ASAP and get this straightened out so you have the paperwork to prove it next time this happens. You also should write Consumer Reports Web site -- they'll love this story.

In this case I think the author is railing on BofA too much, unless the court said "pony up any money from any account" I'm guessing they specifically asked BofA for the money from this particular account. The person responsible here is the Sheriff's office and they are the ones that should be pursued.

I think I might ask my employer to pay me in bitcoin soon. Or shit, maybe gold bars that I pick up every few weeks.

I use bitwage and most of my paycheck is automatically converted to Bitcoin.

They have failed to pay back billions, much less $3k. Do not do business with any organization on this list: https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list

Disclaimer: I know very little about any of this, and am just commenting because I was surprised by one of the places listed. That place listed, I work for its 'sister' credit union, State Employees' Credit Union (NC)

It looks like the list items are there for different reasons, not all because they're big lenders who got bailed out. I clicked on Greater Kinston Credit Union[1]. Its reason for being on there is the 'Community Development Capital Initiative'[2].

Excerpt from [2]: 'designed to provide cheap financing to Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI): banks, thrifts or credit unions that operate in markets underserved by traditional financial institutions. The idea was that the banks would then lend that money to small businesses in their areas.'

That one sounds pretty benign (i.e. it's not "bailing out Too Big To Fail companies for crappy practices"--GKCU is a small credit union), so I think the list you posted is more nuanced than crappy Too Big To Fail bailout companies.

[1] https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/entities/936-greater... [2] https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/programs/13-communit...

From your own source, the government _made_ about 2 billion off of the BofA bailout. This includes the 2 billion write-off of TARP funds they gave to the home mortgage group.

Not defending BofA, just saying your source material doesn't make the point you think it does.

You are correct, thank you I read the last update wrong. I personally still attempt to not do business with these organizations for multiple reasons.

All TARP funds were paid back with interest. From a revenue standpoint, the government should bail out banks more often.

what?

TARP made money for the US government. They lent banks money at interest, and were paid back. If the government were a private entity that would be recorded as "profit".

If you want more government revenue, you should be pushing for more frequent bank bailouts.

Wow. Lots of parties liable here. Reeks of those cases where banks forceclosed on the wrong houses.

Sad that one has to go public like this to get anything to happen, but I suspect that it will help showing the world how incompetent the involved parties were.

I remember there being some brilliant story in the reverse direction where someone sued a bank (I believe it was BoA) for something like this and won. When the bank didn't respond they got the court to allow property seizure to recover damages. Guy rocked up at a local bank branch and started taking computers and such with court order in hand and sheriff watching. He was legally robbing the bank. Bank reacted quite quickly then!

Looks like it comes from dispute between a Montclair Place shopping mall sushi restaurant and an investor:

https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/8541827/Jeffrey_Lin...

Here is one of the defendants' info:

https://www.myrelatives.com/d/XIAO-LI/1353226340

Looks like he moved from Oregon to North Carolina in May 2014. Here was his old house:

https://www.redfin.com/OR/West-Linn/2245-River-Heights-Cir-9...

Here are the court documents:

https://document.li/r7zs

https://document.li/9xL1

https://document.li/2r4h

https://document.li/ThA6

https://document.li/lQoK

https://document.li/7G1S

https://document.li/Sg8p

https://document.li/0q4m

https://document.li/iYgL

https://document.li/ehHq

My personal nightmare with BofA started when they merged with Fleet. I had a credit card with Fleet and it had been set to auto-pay the balance every month. After the merger, the auto-pay got disabled without telling me and by the time I realized it two months later, around $20 of interest had accrued. After customer support calls to try to get it resolved, they refused to refund the interest. So I asked to cancel my account and asked for the full-payoff amount and the address to mail the check. Since I had paperless billing, I didn't have an official slip to send in with my payment, but I wrote my Fleet account number on the check and the check was cashed a couple of weeks later. I assumed the unpleasant situation was finished.

Little did I know, my nightmare was just beginning. Several years later, I was applying for an apartment and I failed the credit check. I got a hold of my credit report and saw that BofA claimed I had a large unpaid balance that was several years behind. After calling them many times to try to resolve it, we finally figured out that they had credited my payment to a non-existent account and that my account had a different BofA account number that was different from my Fleet account number. I thought that would clear everything up, but after they reconciled the two accounts, they still claimed I owed them over $4k in interest that had accrued on the unpaid account. No amount of common sense could make them realize that they cashed my full-payout amount check so my account should be fully paid off. It took getting a lawyer involved for them to finally zero out my account and, by that time, I'd missed out on the apartment. The lawyer also helped me dispute the credit mark on my account with the agencies because BofA refused to remove it. Hundreds of hours of my life calling their inept customer service and over $1k in legal fees all because of their screw-ups.

BofA are a truly despicable company that doesn't give customer service reps the ability to make even obvious, common-sense adjustments which leads situations like mine. Whenever I have the chance, I try to warn people away from doing business with them. They literally took a happy customer (I loved Fleet) and, through incompetence unwillingness to act reasonably, turned him into an enemy for life. And all for $20.

> ...So what we do here is match you with one of our members for a $30 fee which guarantees you a 30-minute conversation...

That's a good service to have I needed it and was referred but ten days later still no callback. And there was deadline I had to honour long passed. There was little time between when I needed the lawyer which I can't afford and the deadline. Scumbags know the law so well you are screwed for time trying to fight anyone.

> my credit union was infinitely more competent than the buffoons at Bank of America.

This. It's not even a pro-credit union thing: small banks handle exceptional situations much better than big banks in my experience. You'd think it would be the opposite, but it's not. When the tellers know every customer, even when I almost never walk in, exceptions seem to generate a helpful phone call.

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled, was convincing the world that when the bank gets money stolen from it, it's your money, and not theirs.

BTW what's with the weird grey fade out effect at the bottom? It simply slows down reading. Fortunately "reader mode" works.

I have had a similar issue before just call office controller currency. They are pretty good about getting on the banks.

This amount of money seems like it would be a good candidate for small claims court. Can anyone tell me if this guy can use small claims court (which is easy to initiate) to recover the money? I feel like even if he lodged a motion against the branch manager for negligence it might be enough to get things cleared up.

What the heck happened to the site?

http://soraven.com/2017/04/05/how-bank-of-america-gave-away-... now shows some spam ads and nothing else.

The link seems to be broken now. From Google Cache I was able to read the article and found out that BoA reached out to the author after the blog post got traction. I wish the post has remained to get more readership and serve as a reminder for BoA to act put together.

Bank of America – what is a SSN?

An ~8 min history lesson.

"Social Security Cards Explained" - CGP Grey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erp8IAUouus

SSN = Social Security Number.

Basically, an identification number used by US Citizens.

It has become a taxpayer ID number too. It's not just citizens. Every individual who is legally authorized to work has one. Every legal entity (like corporations) that has assets usually has one too.

When you have finally managed to get Bank of America to sort out their nonsense, do a little research and change bank. Hopefully, there are banks in the US that aren't that unprofessional.

I especially like how in every case of being screwed by the bureaucracy the lowly citizen has only one option - go the the lawyers. And what are those? More bureaucracy!

Even worse, they cost substantial money.

The corp ones, somewhat. The kind the lowly citizen would hire is more of a hired guide to hack his way thru the red tape to the goal. Dont paint all lawyers with the same brush.

It's amazing how it seems the best way to be treated fairly by organisations that have clearly done you wrong is to out them on social media.

Bitcoin is the solution.. banking is broken for consumers because once you give a bank your money it's NOT YOURS.

Is it actually possible to have a comfortable life in the US of A without a family lawyer?

I don't understand why he's taking this on himself to be honest. If I was incorrectly named in some sort of lawsuit, my first reaction would be to call my lawyer. Who knows if there's also an incorrect arrest warrant out for example?

He hasn't been incorrectly named in a lawsuit. His Bank of America account was mistakenly debited as a result of a legal order against some other, unrelated person with a similar name.

Most people don't have lawyers to call. The last 1/3 of his story was about him calling lawyers trying to find one who would talk to him.

If someone told me to call my lawyer I wouldn't know what to do. I don't have a lawyer. I don't know people who "have lawyers" or can recommend one. I met a lawyer once, I think, when I bought my previous house. I'd probably search online for "Lawyers in San Francisco" and pick one at random.

In the article, the amount taken was $3,400.

A lawyer to fight this costs a lot more than that. Also, there's another issue. What if that was his entire savings? Now he has $0 for a lawyer.

So hire a heavy hitter on contingency. IANAL.

Sue the bank for the $3400 plus legal costs, fees associated with the loss of fluid assets, punitive charges, and mental anguish. This is a tens of thousands of dollars ask.

Sue the LASD and the LA county court for violations of the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments. There was no due process against OP. OP's property was seized without warrant, trial, or even suspicion against OP. The OP had no access to trial or to legal representation but was separated from belongings. This is a multiple hundreds of thousands ask.

Someone will surely notice the wrong of $3400 plus legal costs and some interest and fees and settle before the tens and hundreds of thousands get in front of a judge.

And here I was wondering what my new anxiety for the day would be.

Interesting response video from Martin Shkreli, who is mostly known for his EpiPen scandal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HROHxpDE6Dw

Wow what a horror show

Why isn't anyone questioning the LASD for fucking up a basic SSN comparison before requesting a fund-transfer from BoFA? Isn't this really the LASD's fault. Can't you sue the LASD for damages?

Was the bank really at fault here? From what I see they receive a legal letter from the Sheriff’s Department, and they complied with the letter. The article doesn't say what was included in the letter to the bank, I assume the author doesn't know either. It could have the wrong SSN, or the Sheriff’s Department just looked up the defendant's name, found the author's account number and SSN, and sent those to the bank.

Any major corporation has lawyers (either in-house or on retainer) to verify that court orders are valid before complying with them. Bank of America either chose not to use them, or they didn't do their own due diligence. You can bet this wouldn't have happened if the case involved several hundred thousands (or millions) of dollars.

Court orders have to be specific for a reason - to protect property rights. If some of the information on a court order doesn't match the facts, the proper thing to do is challenge it. Using a warrant as an example, law enforcement isn't allowed to get a judge to allow them to enter a property and just take "anything incriminating". They need to specifically list what they're taking, what case it's in conjunction to, and how the property relates to the case. They're not allowed to take anything that doesn't match the exact specifics of the order.

And if any of that information is wrong, the order is invalid and executing it makes people liable to civil suits. The bank should have challenged it themselves, since they had the necessary information to do so (a name and SSN). Failing that, they should have informed the customer with sufficient time to do it for them.

Bank of America doesn't deserve a pass on this. They screwed up. The court did, too, but it's BoA's job to hold on to people's money and verify identities before handing it out. Had they just told the court that the bank account didn't match the specified person, the court would have taken "no" for an answer.

It's true, we don't know what was in the letter, but there was probably some information that didn't match.

Even if not, the bank still failed to notify him in time to contest the levy. That makes it their fault.

BoA gave everybody's money-substitute-government-credit away, but few have realised it (Even thou BoA says so themselves in their financial statements). So the guy is lucky in a way; he now doesn't trust the thieves. Even fewer realise that the banknotes they are so proudly holding have long ago been defaulted on. It's all running on illusions now. Sell your paper.

Amazing how much down voting one gets for stating facts.

It’s barely related to this story, and isn’t that interesting of a comment. Sorry.

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