Bank of America fined $150M for consumer abuses: fake accounts, bogus fees | Hacker News Reader

Bank of America fined $150M for consumer abuses: fake accounts, bogus fees

cnbc.com

> The bank charged multiple $35 overdraft fees for the same transaction

"Consumer abuses" is an interesting way to say criminal fraud.

Why exactly is this bank allowed to continue operating? An individual bank teller convicted of defrauding their customers would be fired on the spot, and never work in a bank again. Why should it be different for institutions, if the institution as a whole engages in systematic fraud?

Wouldn't it be great if reporters and editors used the appropriate terminology?

A single clerk doing that crime would do time. A company doing this gets chided.

My local credit union did the same exact thing, after the class action lawsuit i got a $20 settlement for about $120 they stole from me. Absolutely insane how they were still able to keep some of the stolen money, meanwhile there are people behind bars for using counterfeit 20$ bills.

It's common. Lloyds once charged me overdraft fees twice when I left England and my last debit came before my landlord returned my garanty. They then kept charging me fees for a sub-zero account every month for three months while my account was in the green before finally charging me overdraft fees triggered by their own mistake.

They didn't refund me everything once I pointed it. I'm fairly certain they did it on purpose hoping to siphon out an account with little use.

Banks are shameless.

Finance has totally captured the government, it's been a long time. Neither party is looking out for citizens, they're looking out for these banks. As long as we keep supporting these parties, this only gets worse.

because BofA employs 217000 people, and just like in any other large bank and even general population, a certain percentage of them have been, are, and will be thieves and criminals, including part of the management, who will take opportunities to defraud their customers and their company. Kind of like how Walmart employees stealing merchandise or Chipotle employees coming into work infected and poisoning customers, that happened. The goal here is not to destroy every faulty organization, but to try to identify the responsible, fine and correct those crimes.

I have a question, if I commit identity theft and create a bogus account in someone's name, without their consent, do I only have to pay a negligible fine if I am caught? If I repeatedly send fraudulent bills to BoA, do I only have to pay a negligible fine if I'm caught?

Again, if something cannot go to jail when it commits a crime it is not a person.

this isn't even very remarkable, it's kind of a perpetual ongoing thing with all big banks:

> Six of the nation’s largest banks—Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo—have amassed more than $1 billion in fines in 35 cases in just the last 15 months

Corporate greed is killing us all and citizens united makes us powerless to stop it. A general strike is needed to reset the balance of power.

Problem is the fines aren't high enough and people aren't being charged with crimes.

Don’t you know that a company is a person except for the whole being responsible for your actions bit.

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