June 2025 by Megan Glover
After having a checking account open for more than a year, receiving my monthly disability in that account by direct deposit, I was forced to close my account today. Apparently, if you get scammed, they not only don't protect you, they punish you for it. My husband signed up online to get our vehicle wrapped for advertising purposes with a company that claims they pay you to advertise with your vehicle. When he got a check in the mail for more than $1800 from said company, he took it to the bank and asked them to validate it. Whichever teller handled this transaction told him that if he deposits the check into our account, and it clears, it should be fine, even ran the account and routing numbers to validate the account it came from. He deposited the check, and we waited to see if it cleared, which it had when he checked our account the following morning. We waited another day or two before using ANY of the money. We paid a couple bills up that would've otherwise been behind (times are tough), ordered some takeout we wouldn't have, but left plenty to pay for the wrapping of the vehicle. Two days later, the check issuer processed a reversal of the check, leaving our account hundreds of dollars in the negative, with no funds coming until my disability check was deposited. This morning, after the account was brought back in the positive with my disability, we discovered our debit card was disabled. I called the bank to have them fix it, expecting it to be a result of the negative balance for a couple weeks, but was told that our account is being closed because of the risk of fraud on our account, because WE deposited a check that was later reversed, flagging it as fraud. So we have now been punished for being victims of fraud, labeled as scammers, when we were the victims. They lost zero funds, but we've been left broke and struggling by this, with NO light at the end of the tunnel. When I went to the main branch to try to sort it out and plead our case, so the manager (I believe) called this branch to find out what happened, and apparently spoke to the teller that deposited the check for my husband, and she told the manager that all she told him was that she had no way to know if the check would clear. This doesn't explain why my husband would come home from depositing this check, knowing that he was uncertain and suspicious of it, confidently telling me that they said if it clears, it must be a good check. There was no warning of consequences should this check turn out to be a scam, just the advise to wait for it to clear before trying to use any of it, which we did. Never in my life have I heard of a bank punishing financial crime victims, but this one clearly does, and will NEVER get my business again, nor will I sit back and let anyone I care about do business with them without knowing all about this garbage. We've been good customers, and we did NOTHING to deserve this, but now I have to hope that I can get my disability direct deposit stopped and sent to a different account, that I don't currently have. It's not right.
