Bank of America freezing accounts of non-citizens

[WOT?*]

www.sacbee.com/news/business/article217567300.html

Saeed Moshfegh woke up earlier this month to discover the strangest thing: though he had plenty of money in his Bank of America account, he couldn’t access it.

An Iranian getting his Ph.D in physics at the University of Miami, Moshfegh used the account for everyday transactions. All he had to do to maintain the account was show proof of legal residency every six months.

“I think it’s onerous, but I’d been doing it,” said Moshfegh, who has lived in the U.S. for the past seven years. He recently married an American.



Read more here: www.sacbee.com/news/business/article217567300.html#storylink=cpy

[isabel]

“One would think a national bank would be careful about looking stupid after Wells Fargo,”

Seriously. This seems like a really stupid PR move. I don't understand what they gain by doing this.

eta: I signed the petition linked in the article.

[pugz]

This happened to my friend just last month! She and her husband are both US citizens but apparently they failed to respond to a letter sent in the mail asking if her husband was a US citizen. She believes they were targeted because they are hispanic. Her husband had to go into the bank and show his birth certificate to get it unfrozen. They have since switched banks.

[winecat]

Seems legit.

Mother fuckers.

[centralsquare]

WTF. Fuck everyone.

[Mushe]

This is atrocious! How is it so hard to not be assholes?

We’re waiitng for our au pair to get her SSN, and I was going to have her open an account there, so we can easily transfer her stipend. I won’t knowingly set her up for this kind of discrimination. 😥

[starlily]

Aug 30, 2018 19:45:58 GMT -5 pugz said:

This happened to my friend just last month! She and her husband are both US citizens but apparently they failed to respond to a letter sent in the mail asking if her husband was a US citizen. She believes they were targeted because they are hispanic. Her husband had to go into the bank and show his birth certificate to get it unfrozen. They have since switched banks.

I read about this story! BofA is horrible.

[mrsukyankee]

There is a reason why my dad is on my account in the States and this is it.

[shauni27]

This makes me rage with the fire of a thousand suns. WTAF. How is that even legal?

[mrsukyankee]

It's another way to lose international students -if you think banks won't open an account for you or will close it at their whim while you are here, why would you want to come to the US?

[audette]

Holy fuck. Glad we're not with BoA anymore.


I'm a permanent resident. I shouldn't have to do more than provide that proof once, and again after I renew.

[AJL]

Another article popped up on Snopes about this and the person who had his account frozen was a native born citizen (Kansas.) I was a BOA customer for over 20 years and never did they inquire about my citizenship. This is so fishy and strange. What are BOA's motives for doing this?

From Snopes about the Kansas citizen - www.snopes.com/news/2018/08/04/bank-of-america-freeze/

[wawa]

I just picked a company at random to check their requirements because I was curious how common this requirement is since it's not a regulatory thing apparently.

Capitol one 360 checking requires you to be a citizen or lawful permanent resident.

Huh. So...how common is this? And if it's not a regulatory thing, why do they do it?

[madringal]

My experience as a former Chase branch manager (I left in 2015 so things may have changed):

1 - We asked all new account holders if they are US citizens.
2 - There were different types of ID that we could accept based on their residency status.
3 - We could not open accounts for certain residents of OFAC restricted countries.
4 - The type of residency status they had could impact the their interest withholding.
5 - If accounts were really old and we did not have the information (or they came from a bank merger and the predecessor bank didn't gather that information) we would occasional get a list of customers to call and try to gather that information.
6 - If that information was not provided in the allotted time, Chase would restrict the accounts.
7 - We were trained that this information gathering was because of the level of pressure on the banks to detect and report money laundering (specifically for drugs, terrorist funding groups, and most recently for sex trafficking)
8 - The Government does not require the information, but they do expect the banks to monitor for this activity, which results in banks creating their own policies.
9 - They really can't win - either they upset customers and get raked over the coals or they get changed heft fines and the headline reads BIG FAT MEGA BANK ALLOWS SEX TRAFFICKING
10 - After the Bernie Madoff scandal (he was a Chase customer) Chase required an ID from an account holder to deposit cash into your account. Not on the account? You can't deposit cash into it. Don't have your ID, basically tough luck. It was a drastic step - but that's what they had to do to show the government they had taken steps to better comply with the BSA. Now, I can guarantee Bernie Madoff wasn't walking into his local branch and structuring cash deposits to remain undetected, but that's what we had to do.
11- So yes, the government does not require the info for you to open and maintain bank accounts, but the do require the banks to prove they have policies in place to prevent money laundering. And when you have banks as big as Chase, WF, BOA - those polices are going to be unpopular and most likely unfair just so they can cover their butts.

[madringal]

Aug 31, 2018 9:30:54 GMT -5 wawa said:

I just picked a company at random to check their requirements because I was curious how common this requirement is since it's not a regulatory thing apparently.

Capitol one 360 checking requires you to be a citizen or lawful permanent resident.

Huh. So...how common is this? And if it's not a regulatory thing, why do they do it?

The credit union I work for now doesn't allow non US citizens to have accounts either. Basically because it opens us up to a whole other realm of reporting, monitoring, tax collection, etc. We just don't have the resources to fund those types of accounts.

[rupertpenny]

madringal you have explained why my mom can’t deposit cash for me. It drives us crazy. We live abroad so she occasionally makes deposits into our US accounts (BOA and Citi) but recently she has had to deposit cash into her own account and write a check.

Anyway, this news is troubling. My dad and stepdad are both green card holders and I worry about them. My stepdad is married to my mom, who is a natural born citizen, and she is on his accounts so I’m sure he’d be fine. I’m less confident about my dad though.

[wise_rita]

Aug 31, 2018 10:55:10 GMT -5 Stan said:

I work for a top ten bank that tours diversity. Last week one of my regular clients came in to cash a check. We can use a foreign passport to do so. She had gone to another branch and a teller harassed her about the visa. I was livid. Nowhere in our job description does it say we work for ICE. Nowhere in teller training are you trained to look for visas. And then the bitch teller marked her visit as suspicious because the client left. YEAH BECAUSE YOU WERE ASKING HER IMMIGRATION QUESTIONS AND SHE WAS TERRIFIED. My coworker and I calmed the client down and then filed a complaint. The best part was that her visa was fine, the idiot teller just read the month and day backwards. I told them if that’s who we were as a bank I wasn’t interested in employment any longer.

Holy shit!  Can you escalate this with management and get that teller reprimanded?

Or at least make sure all tellers know what is and is not within their job to ask/care about?

[GilliC]

As a US citizen living abroad, I could kind of understand them *closing* accounts of non-citizens (due to FATCA, several non-US banks have decided that it’s easier to drop their US customers than try to comply with reporting requirements). But freezing them? That’s a total dick move. You don’t want the customer base, fine, but you apply that rule across the board to all non-citizen account holders, and you give people their money back.

My (non-US) XH was a BoA account holder from before we were married. We had a joint BoA account that he could never sort out closing. I’d already taken my half of the assets out, but he was lazy about actually doing the paperwork to close it. I wonder if it’s frozen now.