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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

#421

Post by raincom »

avitous wrote: post #339
raincom wrote: post #41

Banks hide behind Bank Secrecy Act and other regulations in order to debank people. Chase closed my account, and the reason Chase gave: "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." I didn't dispute any t…

> not an instance of disrespecting any Chase employee either on phone or in person. Since when is this grounds for closing an account?

Earlier, banks used to warn customers at least once for any disrespect towards employees. Now, expect big banks and financial institutions to close accounts without any warning, unless you are a wealthy client. Charles Schwab and Chase do that.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#422

Post by titanomachy »

toast0 wrote: post #108
chungy wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your own link says that they may decline cash payments. United States currency is legal for all debts public and private (it says so on the notes), but that doesn't mean it's required to be accepted for all debts.

Many restaurants provide food and service before payment. At that point, it's a little late to refuse legal tender. Restaurants that require payment before providing food have more flexibility.

I imagine if the restaurant staff called the police and claimed you were refusing to pay for your meal, and your defense was “but I offered them cash”, then that would actually be a pretty good defense. It’s hard to imagine the cops siding with the restaurant and arresting you for theft.

So I think you’re right, even though it sounds like a minor distinction.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#423

Post by Scoundreller »

reaperman wrote: post #191
musictubes wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved from the US to Yemen from 2006-2008. After I got the travel details figured out I realized I would need some way of getting money while I was there. Freaked out for a bit, figured that with the war on terror ongoing it would prove to be incredibly difficult. Turns out my ATM card worked fine while I was over there. I did let the bank know I would be there and I kept my address in the US though. My card got lo…

I got put on a watch list during my time in Saudi and Abu Dhabi. Didnt affect my banking but every plane ticket i got for years had “SSSS”[0] printed/sharpied on it and all my luggage would get a secondary hand-search at every stop immediately pre-boarding both domestically and internationally. I am just average white US citizen who was working on oil rigs but most likely some of my whatsapp/facebook/iMessage contact…

I've heard when you get an SSSS ticket, you can make up some of the lost time by going to the first class security line. It's not like they're going to send you back to the regular line when it bings and alarms after they scan your ticket.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#424

Post by brewdad »

crooked-v wrote: post #106
chungy wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your own link says that they may decline cash payments. United States currency is legal for all debts public and private (it says so on the notes), but that doesn't mean it's required to be accepted for all debts.

No, it must be accepted for debts. But a restaurant bill generally isn't going to be a 'debt' in that sense... if they only take credit cards and you don't have one after already eating your food, they're just going to write it off and ban you from the premises.

In my experience, they will direct you to the ATM on premises to get some cash. If you have neither cash nor a card to get cash, the police will be called.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#425

Post by vvpan »

krupan wrote: post #338
vvpan wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, to say that "Bitcoin" is the epitome of blockchain technology, an ever-innovating field, is either ignorant or disingenuous.

Bitcoin is ever innovating in ways that are safe and transparent, see Taproot that was added fairly recently. Other crypto has proven to be at best run by incompetent folks, at worst straight up scams. Either way you lose with them. Sorry, but that's what the years have taught us.

Well, I would totally disagree. I love safe and transparent but it is just not what gets the job done. I've had to transfer money to people around the world and people have asked to send them dollar-pegged tokens on networks like Tron and Polygon. These are not ideologically sexy networks at all but they have clearly found product-market fit. Metamask (convenience) + low fees + fiat peg (less volatility and easier to understand) and people are all about it. And, whether we like it or not, it works.

Meanwhile I've had the majority of my net worth on Ethereum for over 5 years now and am not really worried about it. And I get user experience that I can never get with bitcoin, like social recovery smart contract wallets.

And taproot is two years old.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#426

Post by oblio »

nine_k wrote: post #416
lamontcg wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah we need strong anti-Kafka laws so that individuals can always find out what they've been "charged" with and that there always need to be an "appeal" process and businesses are strictly denied the ability to claim that they can't reveal their methods.

Listing the specific problem that led to a service denial could be helpful, but could be not. I bet that it's very rarely something like "You did , so we ban you according to the rule 3.6.4.2 of ToS". It could be something like: "The pattern of your activity is very similar to patterns of activity of 9823 known scam attacks". Or even more detailed: "8 out of 11 statistical models analyzing 982 parameters of your acti…

Doesn't matter. Just forcing them to disclose that info would force them to clean up their act.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#427

Post by dehrmann »

throw3823423 wrote: post #344
advael wrote: post #162

I'm somewhat surprised no one here views this as an automated decisionmaking problem It's increasingly clear that automating important decisions like this is causing a lot of harm while removing most forms of recourse available to those affected. Coupled with the way automated decisions are used to perform and then launder fraud on a massive scale, maybe we should target laws at the automation itself: Require decisio…

I've been a part of a system like this (a financial system that happens to not be technically a bank). The system was constantly under attack by fraudsters: You could find subreddits with guides on how to try to outright rob us. So we had teams building detection systems that tied to detect said fraud as early as possible: Hopefully before we handed the fraudsters any money. Depending on how bad the score was, there…

> But a detailed explanation of why we thought something was fraudulent could (and sometimes would!) just lead to another fun reddit post where someone describes how to hide the fraud a little better.

I worked for a company doing this sort of fraud detection. Knowing features and weights really would make it easier for fraudsters.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#428

Post by oblio »

jimmydddd wrote: post #328
lamontcg wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah we need strong anti-Kafka laws so that individuals can always find out what they've been "charged" with and that there always need to be an "appeal" process and businesses are strictly denied the ability to claim that they can't reveal their methods.

I had my Venmo account frozen. I'd only made about three payments. Two to a food bank and one to a school organization. Via email, they said the decision was permanent and their policy was to not discuss why the decision was made. Luckily for me it was only Venmo, which I don't really need to use.

Similar story with Uber UK. Account banned but just in the UK... After tens of rides across the world.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#429

Post by eunos »

lamontcg wrote: post #186
advael wrote: post #162

I'm somewhat surprised no one here views this as an automated decisionmaking problem It's increasingly clear that automating important decisions like this is causing a lot of harm while removing most forms of recourse available to those affected. Coupled with the way automated decisions are used to perform and then launder fraud on a massive scale, maybe we should target laws at the automation itself: Require decisio…

Yeah we need strong anti-Kafka laws so that individuals can always find out what they've been "charged" with and that there always need to be an "appeal" process and businesses are strictly denied the ability to claim that they can't reveal their methods.

This is one of the consequence of strong Anti Money Laundering law. Bank much prefers to avoid False Negative (letting money launderers operate).

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#430

Post by resolutebat »

nanidin wrote: post #156
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.

Simply spending money can trigger anti-fraud measures, but those are usually easily sorted out with a call.

What all the people profiled in the article have in common is that they were depositing money in "suspicious" ways.

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