One of America’s biggest banks is reportedly refusing to reimburse a customer after thousands of dollars vanished from his account.
Mike Mitchell, who runs a home rental company in Florida, says he recently realized $3,771 left his business account at Wells Fargo without his authorization, reports the CBS-affiliated news station WKMG.
According to the National Automated Clearing House Association (NACHA), banking clients have only 24 hours to report an unauthorized ACH transfer for it to be investigated – which Mitchell missed by 2 hours and 34 minutes.
Mitchell then decided to contact reporters at WKMG, which led the bank to review his claim.
According to Mitchell, the money appears to have gone from his account to a company called Pay-By-Phone, an app for parking payments. However, Mitchell says he’d never heard of the company – and knows he didn’t rack up three grand in parking tickets.
Mitchell says bank has confirmed the money was sent to a merchant account at Certegy Card Services, an ACH payment and check verification platform often used by retailers.
Mitchell says Wells Fargo contacted Certegy, which declined to return the funds.
“Somehow the merchant credit card payment received our account information (bank number and routing number is all that is needed) and initiated the ACH transaction for $3,771.99…
Wells Fargo requested the funds be returned from the ‘originating bank,’ Certegy Card Services, but the originating bank refused to return the money.”
According to the US Secret Service, ACH transfer fraud is “almost commonplace” and people should monitor their accounts for illegitimate transfers on a daily basis.
A spokesperson for Wells Fargo said there’s no evidence Mitchell’s account was hacked or compromised in any way, and the matter is closed.
“There was no unauthorized account access related to this payment. The merchant’s bank originated this ACH transaction and we provided the information to our customer to resolve the payment dispute with the merchant and merchant’s bank.”
After losing the money with no apparent recourse, Mitchel says he’s now done with the bank and has since closed all seven of his Wells Fargo accounts.
“We have pulled basically all of our money out of Wells Fargo because it’s not safe there.”
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