XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.republicans, sac.politics   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns   
   From: fraud@chase.com   
      
   On 20 Mar 2022, PaxPerPoten  posted some   
   news:t177h3$2rm8s$20@news.freedyn.de:   
      
   > Banks are stealing our money, aided and abetted by Joe Biden.   
      
   Naafeh Dhillon had just left the holiday light show at Saks Fifth Avenue   
   in New York when he learned that all of his bank accounts had mysteriously   
   gone dark.   
      
   After the show, Dhillon, his girlfriend and some friends escaped the cold   
   and had dinner at a French bistro — but when it came time to pay the   
   check, his credit card was declined. His debit card was rejected next. It   
   had to be some sort of mistake, he figured, because he had plenty of money   
   in his account.   
      
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   But when he returned home that mid-December evening and called his bank,   
   Chase, a customer representative delivered the unexpected news: The bank   
   had dumped him as a customer. The rep said he should have received a   
   letter in the mail but couldn’t say much more than what was in the notice   
   — “unexpected activity” had led to the closing of his accounts.   
      
   “I received no kind of warning or red flag,” said Dhillon, 28, who had   
   started banking with Chase after visiting its marketing booth at New York   
   University, which he attended after arriving in 2013 from Pakistan. “It   
   was just out of the blue.”   
      
   Since he wasn’t given a specific reason for the closure, he couldn’t   
   disprove whatever raised suspicions in the first place. “It was almost   
   like getting a scarlet letter,” he added.   
      
   A Rise in Suspicious Activity Reports   
      
   With fraudulent activity on the rise and exploding during the pandemic,   
   some banks are taking an even harder look at their customers’ transactions   
   — and closing their accounts when they feel that it’s necessary.   
      
   Because financial institutions have a front-row seat for watching the   
   country’s cash flow, financial institutions are obligated to alert   
   regulators and law enforcement through a Suspicious Activity Report if   
   there’s irregular behavior that they cannot easily explain.   
      
   Not all reports lead to account closures, and not all closures lead to   
   reports. But if banks fail to report suspicious activity and regulators   
   discover problematic transactions later, banks and their compliance   
   employees are potentially on the hook for all manner of penalties.   
      
   “So all their incentives are toward closing accounts,” according to an   
   explanation of SARs on the website of the Bank Policy Institute, a   
   research and advocacy organization that represents mid- and large-size   
   banks.   
      
   Financial institutions filed 1.4 million of these SARs in 2021, according   
   to a bureau of the Treasury Department. That was nearly 70% higher than   
   the 839,314 filed in 2014.   
      
   Besides the overall rise in fraudulent activity, several factors could be   
   behind the increase in filings — more alerts from government officials   
   tipping off banks to specific activities, increasingly sophisticated   
   technologies to detect them and more regulatory scrutiny.   
      
   Yet most of the time, the customers are probably innocent. A 2018 study   
   from the Bank Policy Institute found that a median of just 4% of 640,000   
   SARs from a sample of large banks warranted a follow-up from law   
   enforcement, according to the research, which examined 16 million alerts.   
      
   “It is the bank’s version of ‘If you see something, say something,’” said   
   Sharon Cohen Levin, a former chief of the money-laundering and asset   
   forfeiture unit in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of   
   New York, and currently a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, which advises   
   financial institutions on compliance with the anti-money-laundering laws.   
      
   Vague Explanations   
      
   Dhillon, who lives in Brooklyn, had a job interview the day after his   
   cards were declined at the restaurant. Convinced that his debit card   
   should work — after all, the Chase mobile app reflected his balance — he   
   tried to use it again to pay for freshly printed copies of his resume.   
   After his card was declined again, he called the bank from the printing   
   shop. Chase only reiterated what it had told him the night before.   
      
   The next morning, he went to his Chase branch. He left with a cashier’s   
   check for his account balance but without any satisfying answers.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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