Citibank can close your account and hold your money for 30-60 days without cause | Hacker News Reader

Citibank can close your account and hold your money for 30-60 days without cause

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42 pointsummonk14 comments

I think one of the commenters on Twitter got it right. The fact that Citi did not back down after a CFBP tells me there is a SAR (Suspicious Activity Report) on the file, which the bank is not legally allowed to inform the customer about.

> "Citi reserves the right to close an account at any time and for any reason, with or without cause."

This is the truth, and I imagine it applies to just about every bank. Years ago, a friend of mine had this happen to her with USAA. It took an Executive Email Carpet Bomb to get resolved, and I haven't banked with USAA since.

I can absolutely recommend having a few accounts at different institutions, preferably at local or regional credit unions. I'm sure they have this same right to cease business with a customer, but I think it would be easier to resolve (if it happens in the first place). But by having multiple accounts, you can avoid losing access to the total sum of your money all at once, which is what happened to my friend.

Absolutely. Setting up a new bank account sounds annoying but it's mostly done online and every month there are plenty of banks offering like $200 - $1000 in signup bonuses. Totally worth it to have a backup bank account.

Basically any institution that handles your money has leeway to screw you like this (see all the stories about PayPal and Stripe freezing people's funds). It's unfortunate.

This has Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) written all over it. This applies to every financial institution in the US, UK, and most other countries too I imagine.

In the UK, an individual can be prosecuted for “tipping off” someone about a SAR. I assume something similar exists in the US. This is why the banks respond with absolutely minimal communication.

> individual can be prosecuted for “tipping off” someone about a SAR

Which is like the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. Money launderers surely have noooooo idea what's happening when their accounts get mysteriously locked and every rep they speak to is suddenly a powerless idiot.

If there was actually a concern of suspicious activity, you'd think the fastest way to resolve it would be to cut out the middleman. "Your account is under investigation, call the regional FBI office and mention case number 123456 to reach the guy who filed the complaint."

This is working on the assumption that the majority of these flags end up being false positives (hence, "suspicious" activity, not "illegal"). If the common cases can be sorted out by a 30-minute phone call and faxing over some missing documentation, that saves resources on the law-enforcement side trying to reconstruct the same facts from "outside".

Of course, as you said, the real criminals will presumably take both the "bank suddenly started acting weird" and "here's an actual notice of investigation" as similarly strong signals to cut and run.

Pretty sure that not only every bank can do that, every bank MUST do that in case the account is under investigation.

It's a non-story.

the author of the tweet is just trying to evoke some outrage from the uninformed in order to try to get his money and run.

It's a travesty of justice that we have allowed this to be law. The government should never be able to steal your assets when you haven't even been convicted of a crime.

There should at least be a way to use the funds in escrow for legal defense.

I had accounts frozen for no reason (even when I was abroad without any money and the bank saying they can only resolve it if I visit in person); just have multiple accounts, it is the only way. For me, luckily, it were all computer flagged transactions which all were easy to explain.

I closed my google pay account and they just keep the money. Apparently they have no mechanism to send it to you. If it weren’t retarded and criminal it’d be funny.

Another reason to keep some of your savings in a cryptocurrency wallet.

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