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Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

nytimes.com

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Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#151

Post by raincom »

fencepost wrote: post #112
raincom wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they sent me a cashier check for a small balance (around $1000) I left, as Chase gave me 45 days heads up for closure. However, for some people, Chase dragged out until after CFPB complaints are filed. The case one should worry about these banks is this: you deposit a $500K check, or you got a wire for $500K; check was cleared on the sender's side. Now Chase/Big Bank holds your funds, saying that this check is f…

I'm very far from dealing with 500k personal banking transactions, but my immediate thought is that if you're doing so you're probably making mistakes. If it's revenue from sale of a company or similar, move it through escrow with your attorney. If it's a legal settlement, do the same. If you don't have an attorney but are dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars, get an attorney. If it's income from trading or…

I just gave an example based on what I read on reddit, as I never deposited $500K in my life. I have no problems with banks' closing accounts, as I have accounts with a couple of local credit unions, who are nice to me.

What caused the closure? A legitimate transaction that they find suspicious. Conjunction of two issues--not sending the funds back and closing the account without releasing funds to the customer--is real 'thievery' in my opinion. Since big banks are NOT interested in resolving disputes about funds by lying to customers, better file a complaint with CFPB right away with many details and documents.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#152

Post by programmertote »

raincom wrote: post #85
programmertote wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to hear your story/experience. This worries me because my mother, who currently resides in a SE Asian nation, is transferring some of her money to me (in the hope that she can use it when she migrates to the US). Did Chase let you withdraw the outstanding balance in full when they closed your account? The last thing I want is to see my money being trapped in limbo state...

Yes, they sent me a cashier check for a small balance (around $1000) I left, as Chase gave me 45 days heads up for closure. However, for some people, Chase dragged out until after CFPB complaints are filed. The case one should worry about these banks is this: you deposit a $500K check, or you got a wire for $500K; check was cleared on the sender's side. Now Chase/Big Bank holds your funds, saying that this check is f…

Glad to hear they gave your money back in full. I'm now really concerned. It sucks that there seems to be no accountability in the system. I get that they want to catch the folks who abuse the banking system, but if they do, they (the government and the banks) should at least set up a proper channel to give reasons and allow folks like us (regular Joe's) to file complaints. The current system seems really ripe for abuse.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#153

Post by fanf2 »

raincom wrote: post #137
panarky wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chase monitors your political activity This is a big claim. It should have big evidence to back it up.

At least in the UK, NatWest debanked Neil Farage's account for his political views. Even its CEO resigned over her lying. "19 Republican states accuse JPMorgan of closing bank accounts and discriminating against customers due to their religious or political beliefs" [1][3]. Of course, this site is not favorable to conservatives and their views. Some left activists' accounts are closed as well [2]. [1] https://www.bus…

No, Natwest got rid of him because he is broke, and the CEO resigned for discussing his personal details in public.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#154

Post by raincom »

panarky wrote: post #149
raincom wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the UK, NatWest debanked Neil Farage's account for his political views. Even its CEO resigned over her lying. "19 Republican states accuse JPMorgan of closing bank accounts and discriminating against customers due to their religious or political beliefs" [1][3]. Of course, this site is not favorable to conservatives and their views. Some left activists' accounts are closed as well [2]. [1] https://www.bus…

The fact that someone with a political opinion had their account closed is not evidence that Chase is monitoring all their customers' political activity and systematically closing accounts for political activity Chase doesn't like. The same way that Chase closing a restaurant's account is not evidence that Chase is tasting the food in every restaurant and systematically closing accounts for restaurants that cook food…

Good that you trust Chase and other banks with the lame 'evidence' that they provide such as: "Financial institutions have an obligation to know our customers and monitor transactions that flow through our customers' accounts. After careful consideration, we decided to close your account because of unexpected activity on these or another Chase account."

Based on that standard template, I won't trust big banks, because, hiding behind BSA, banks can use the blanket statement "because of unexpected activity". Now you ask me to trust Banks, because they can't show that evidence to me.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#156

Post by nanidin »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #78

Protip to anybody who wants to spend an extended amount of time overseas - you’re looking at a strong opportunity to join the list of people who have their accounts closed. Red flags include quantity of overseas debit card transactions, setting a PO Box (this one apparently is a very big red flag to banks) or a PMB as your bank address, lots of wire transfers. Open multiple bank accounts at different banks, use servi…

I spent a year traveling in SE Asia circa 2012 and I didn’t have any problems with my bank account. n=1 and all that, and I didn’t have income coming from outside of the US, but I had countless ATM withdrawals and credit card spends.

The only time a compliance officer has been in touch with me was when I was moving money to crypto exchanges.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#157

Post by kmeisthax »

krupan wrote: post #70

The crazy thing to me in all this is that the types and amounts of transactions you make with your money and the bank is not criminal and never could be. It could however be a technique used to hide things that are criminal like fraud or theft. Somehow somewhere along the way we as a society decided we were ok with criminalizing the types of transactions that can be used to hide crime. That to me should have been a c…

The way you actually prosecute theft and fraud is by looking at the ledger of transactions to see what happened. Money laundering is any deliberate attempt to make tracing those transactions more difficult. Because it hides the evidence of theft or fraud, we criminalize it the same way we'd criminalize theft or fraud, because it's far easier to prove the cover-up than the actual crime. Furthermore, once you've shown evidence of a cover-up, that creates suspicion to start dissolving privacy to prove the actual crime. Dragnet surveillance is illegal[0], but surveillance with reasonable suspicion is not.

In the counterfactual world where money laundering is explicitly legal, crime becomes far harder to prove, the government is far less useful at stopping crime, and people spend more of their time inventing parallel structures to stop crime that are far less accountable than the government is, until we've sleep-walked into anarchocapitalism.

None of this excuses 'debanking' of course. In the case of debanking, you aren't being accused of the crime of money laundering, the bank just thinks you might be, so they summarily execute your account in the same way that Google executes[1] spammers. The thing you need to be angry about is the weaponization of freedom to associate, and you need to be calling for common carrier regulation rather than legalizing financial crime.

[0] Theoretically, at least - the CIA and NSA have fought tooth and nail to get full take, which is disgusting

[1] Metaphorical, at least until 2035 when Google starts livestreaming executions of known spammers

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#158

Post by PumpkinSpice »

gnicholas wrote: post #142
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #78

Protip to anybody who wants to spend an extended amount of time overseas - you’re looking at a strong opportunity to join the list of people who have their accounts closed. Red flags include quantity of overseas debit card transactions, setting a PO Box (this one apparently is a very big red flag to banks) or a PMB as your bank address, lots of wire transfers. Open multiple bank accounts at different banks, use servi…

What qualifies as an "extended amount of time overseas"? If you go on a vacation for 6-8 weeks, does that get you in trouble? I would think banks would want to keep big spenders who can afford months-long international travel.

A single retail account is of no consequence to a national bank that has tens of millions of customers. It doesn't matter if you're spending $10 or $50,000 a month. They care about you as an individual about as much as Google cares about a single Gmail account. If an algorithm flags you as potential trouble, off you go.

If you want better service, there are two ways. One is to be an ultra high net worth individual. But the threshold for that is pretty high - from what I recall, real private banking nowadays starts around $5M to 10M in assets with a single institution. The term "millionaire" doesn't mean as much as it did in the 1990s.

The other option is to go with a small local bank or a credit union. If you're in a CU with 10,000 members, it's a lot easier to resolve problems or discuss unique circumstances.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#159

Post by kmeisthax »

edmundsauto wrote: post #27
RecycledEle wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law says the bank must give them their money. But banks are above the law. I know when PaPal codes and account, PayPal usually steals the money. Most traditional banks eventually give you your money if you hire a lawyer, that is, they give the money to the lawyer who keeps it.

How do you know Paypal usually keeps the money, is there a public accounting of this situation? Would be interesting to analyze - please share any info you have on the data.

PayPal's EULA has a "liquidated damages clause", which means that if they think you lost them money and damaged them, instead of having to go to a court, they just charge you what they think the damages are.
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