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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

#741

Post by pc86 »

manojlds wrote: post #730
pc86 wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any context into OP's story that isn't in this thread, but there's no legal requirement for a bank to immediately give you access to your funds if your account is closed, especially if its closed for suspicious activity. My wife had a PNC account closed when she was in college and their official position was that they would mail a cashier's check to the address on the account within 90 days. I'd be shock…

They said they got access in 1 week. That they got their roll in univ revoked in 1 week that happened to have a long weekend is dubious sounding either side - it all happened in 1 week feels tooshort on univ side or 1 week sounds too short on the bank side

They also said elsewhere that this "1 week" revocation of their university enrollment was the end of a long string of them not paying, not purchasing required insurance, etc.

Basically this happened at the worst possible time and by then the university had had enough of them not paying the bill and not following required policies.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#742

Post by phil21 »

nativeit wrote: post #725
kcatskcolbdi wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want the pendulum to swing the other way. Everybody gets and gets to keep forever an account at the Reserve Bank. I believe this would result in more instances of funds being frozen when under the suspicion of doing something/being associated with someone doing something illegal. Just as Social Security was promised to never be used as a national ID, but was ultimately used as an identification mechanism[1], acco…

Providing the account != requiring its use

That's what folks said about credit and debit cards to the curmudgeony folks like me 30 years ago.

Now I can walk to a half dozen places that won't do business with you if you have neither.

It would likely be defacto required, just line SSN is today. Sure you can "opt-out" - but at severe expense to your life.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#743

Post by ricardobayes »

phil21 wrote: post #664
ricardobayes wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Crypto" as a whole broke the circle of trust for most ordinary people. Mocking cryptos now became so mainstream that UK television ran ads, calling out crypto believers. Not to mention all of crypto on and off ramps are incredibly centralized.

So we're at the "then they laugh at you?" stage of the game it seems? I guess that happened years ago and we are fully in the "and then they fight you" portion of the timeline.

I personally don't think so. I think there are very, very few people actually believing in real-world usage of cryptocurrencies. Most are in it for speculative reasons.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#744

Post by sgjohnson »

caf wrote: post #345
TacticalCoder wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 clear step in the wrong direction. Totally wrong direction. > "Money laundering" (however that is defined) should not be a crime. Theft, fraud, etc. should be. This goes back to this weird fetishism where people think it was oh-so-cool to arres…

Prohibition-era USA was , if not failed, at least a failing society. There was by this point pretty widespread public corruption and general lack of respect for the law. Anyway, wasn't the tax evasion also an actual crime? It's not like you get a pass on the tax evasion because you're also strongly suspected of committing much worse crimes, is it?

> It's not like you get a pass on the tax evasion because you're also strongly suspected of committing much worse crimes, is it?

Tax evasion is what did Al Capone in. Because the bar to prove that he was involved in a lot of seriously criminal activity was quite high, but proving that he committed tax only required proving that he had undeclared income.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#745

Post by marcodave »

planede wrote: post #565
quickthrower2 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks are a special case. If you are going to apply the “they are just a regular business like my local bar” to them by logical extension any business should be able to create new money and transmit it. Nothing special eh! Banks have special rules because they are infrastructure. A cafe needs a bank but not vice versa.

The main issue isn't firing a customer (although it's bad), but locking up their money. It's not like they say "hey, we want to stop doing business with you, please transfer all your money to some other bank within a week or take out your money at the nearest branch", or do they? Locking up the money is basically theft, but I'm sure the law and regulations say otherwise.

If that would be the case, won't there then be the risk of creating a short-circuit which would benefit the actual money launderers/criminals?

Say, I have 3 millions somehow deposited in the $bank_where_i_put_my_shady_money, I want to take/move the money, but doing so will raise some eyebrows, so I deliberately try to debank myself so that I can get all my money cash OR move it to $partner_bank

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#746

Post by Twirrim »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #633
ArabicBaklava wrote: post #481

Bank of america did this to me, in the same weekend i was moving out. All my stuff was in the car, it was a friday at 3PM and i was in the gas station. I couldn't fill up my gas. Called and they told me to come to the bank with two forms of ID. When I arrived to the bank the fraud department was operating in NY (3hrs ahead) and they were closing, so they told me to come next tuesday (it was a long weekend). I went ho…

That's why I have 2 bank accounts. It happened to me once in Africa, and I said "never again". I now have a backup plan for everything that is critical for my life. I have several modes of transportation, several clients, 2 computers, 2 sources of internet, several ways of contacting my family, etc. System always fail.

When something similar happened with an immigrant co-worker in the UK, I quickly picked up a second bank account.

He got stuck for about a week and a half with his money all locked up in an account he couldn't access. It was early enough in the month that rent and bills etc. wasn't an issue, we just ended up helping him out buying food for a few days while he sorted out another account and got an advance on his salary.

I remember the range of excuses and explanations for delays from the bank left us all gobsmacked.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#747

Post by rosmax_1337 »

RugnirViking wrote: post #662
rosmax_1337 wrote: post #602

Either we completely get rid of the idea that everyone has a bank account which they use for everyday transactions, going back to cash as default. Or we guarantee everyone an account which can not be closed for any reason whatsoever, at a state run bank. What we have right now, is untenable and a true sign of a society which has lost it's bearings completely. A bank account nowadays is not some kind of privilege whic…

I think the part about bank officials detracts from your point. Whether or not its actually correct, I think its a separate and divisive issue than highlighting the contradiction of requiring that everyone should be able to get a bank account while demanding that banks not give bank accounts to some people

>I think its a separate and divisive issue

Right, it is incredibly divisive. So is freezing the bank assets of someone, which can endanger their lives at worst and at the minimum causes major distress.

I think it is important to highlight that if you're working at a bank, certainly at a high position, but also everyday clerks, you are lackeys for an organisation that threatens the lives of other people. Those people can choose to retaliate when your organisation gives them no other recourse. It is a fact. Maybe the banks should hire armed private security companies to safeguard the well being of their lackeys?

After all:

- How are you supposed to hire a lawyer to help get your account back when your account is frozen.

- How are you supposed to buy groceries to feed yourself, and your family the within possibly the next few hours. Not everyone has a fully stocked pantry.

- How are you supposed to buy life-sustaining medical supplies to for example a diabetic?

- How are you supposed to pay rent?

Within 1 month, a debanked person will be completely at the whims of being saved by friends and other alternative support networks. They are essentially robbed of everything. 1 month in a bureaucratic context __is nothing__. An issue with frozen bank accounts can take years to resolve, if they are even resolved?! The bank may choose to not give out the money in cash, and may require another bank to receive the funds by wire. What if no other bank takes in this debanked person?!

So when people talk about how divisive it is to mention the absolute animosity that these people will feel towards bank personell of all levels, ask who started it.

And most importantly, if you can't hire a lawyer, you can't buy groceries, you can't pay rent, you can't even buy gas for your car. Your family is standing in line at a homeless shelter, and your kids are crying. What remains other than desperate violence against people you feel are responsible for putting you in this hell of an existence? If you work at a bank, quit now. Don't wait until you've got blood on your hands because you've been a lackey to an inherently anti-human organisation such as a bank. If you continue working for the banks, even as a private contractor which might be the audience of people reading this, you're potentially in the firing line of very desperate people.

And those desperate people are right to be desperate. History doesn't usually change just because someone "filed a complaint", it tends to need to get really bad, and bloody.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#748

Post by pauldenton »

ceejayoz wrote: post #260
phpisthebest wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just follow any Conservative, Christian, or Gun group and you will see stories of Chase closing accounts for political reasons, Chase is will known for this in many political circles

What sort of “political reasons”?

Well if you want an idea of the political reasons, look for the dog that isn't barking

How many of the people waving Taliban flags or HAMAS flags in Britain have been debanked in the past month?

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#749

Post by krupan »

djaro wrote: post #616
krupan wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine, I clicked and read a couple of those. I like the 3rd one that defines a ponzi scheme: "A Ponzi scheme, or "ponzi" for short, is a type of investment fraud with these five features: 1 People invest into it because they expect good profits, and 2. that expectation is sustained by such profits being paid to those who choose to cash out. However, 3. there is no external source of revenue for those payoffs. Instead,…

Really? What external payoff is there for Bitcoin, besides other people investing in Bitcoin? And gas fees means a large portion of money goes towards the "operators" (miners) of the network.

In the article the author claims stocks have an "external" pay off because stock is tied to a company that sells products and if the company does well they might pay shareholders dividends or do a stock buyback. I can accept that a dividend is an "external" source of income, but those are not guaranteed in the stock market by any means. Most people buy stock in hopes that the price will rise due to simple supply and demand (a company buyback is just more demand). If that counts as external then Bitcoin should be covered too, especially since the overall supply of Bitcoin is guaranteed not to rise over a set amount. That's not the case with any other investment in the world (except maybe real estate, depending on how you look at it)

Bitcoin miners do collect rewards and fees (but not "gas" because that's an ethereum thing not a Bitcoin thing) and Miners are a key part of the operation of Bitcoin, but they are not "the operators" of Bitcoin in the same sense that Bernie Madoff was the operator of his fund. Anyone who wants to can become a miner, no permission necessary. Miners do not actively direct the activity of Bitcoin, they cannot change the rules (especially about how much revenue they collect), allow or disallow certain people from participating (and stay profitable), or anything like that.

There are other cryptocurrencies (most of them actually) where the developers of the currency act a lot more like Bernie Madoff type operators. They own a vast majority of the tokens and the source code that runs the network and they make executive decisions about operations, supply of tokens, protocol (code) changes, etc. That is why those of us who have been around a while point out that Bitcoin is the only one that is not a scam.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#750

Post by averageRoyalty »

ArabicBaklava wrote: post #481

Bank of america did this to me, in the same weekend i was moving out. All my stuff was in the car, it was a friday at 3PM and i was in the gas station. I couldn't fill up my gas. Called and they told me to come to the bank with two forms of ID. When I arrived to the bank the fraud department was operating in NY (3hrs ahead) and they were closing, so they told me to come next tuesday (it was a long weekend). I went ho…

Almost exactly the same story, different country. Long weekend, Friday I'm working on site and go to grab a drink at the shop and my card declines. I go to log into internet banking and I can't. I call them, and the tone goes from friendly to frosty out of nowhere.

Took us a full week to get a cheque (!!) that we could take to another bank to move all of our money there. Thankfully, I had just sold something online for cash and was able to live off that, and let my landlords and billers know that I was in the process of rebanking.

Since then I've made it one of my lifes goal to sabotage any benefits to the bank (Macquarie) since. I've so far denied them about $700k AUD in revenue by ensuring any time I see their name I shoot down the deal or find an alternative provider. Luckily they operate heavily in the commercial space. I'll continue to do whatever I can to hurt them. Fuck you Macquarie.

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