Hi there. I really don’t know how to start this. I am kind of new to reddit and this sub but I don’t know any other place to post this. We are very scared right now so any help would be greatly appreciated. This is a very long post but I wanted to include every bit of information I have. Thanks for reading
My parents are neither US-citizens nor US-residents. They live in Spain and don’t plan to visit the States in the near future. Due to them being originally from Venezuela, they considered it prudent to open a US. Bank account in order to protect themselves from inflation. The opened a Citi Bank account in Florida and deposited almost 14,000 USD. Because the account was sort of meant to be also a savings account, they don’t use it much and they did not check it regularly. The last time they checked it was on September 2020 or so. There are 2 debit card affiliated with the account, one for my mom and the other for my dad.
Fast forward to about a week ago, my father received an email from the bank telling him that they were going to close the account because it had insufficient funds. He proceeded to check their account and found that they owed the bank 105 USD. He checked the Bank Statements on his email and found the following
- On November 2020, two unauthorized transactions were processed: one for 4,995.50 USD on the 18th and the other for 3,945.25 USD on the 24th. According to the description they were both Bill Payments to some guy called RIGGIE ALVAREZ.
I am not familiar with this type of transaction myself (English isn’t my first language and I don’t life in the US), but the customer service guy told my father this kind of payment was done through a phone call with my mother debit card number. My mother of course did not have anything to with it. She doesn’t even know the answers to the security questions they made them set up. The only one that knows the answers is my father, who is the one that take charge of this type of business anyway. He wrote them down in a notebook and stored it on a vault.
- On December 12th 2020, another unauthorized transaction was processed for 4,995.15USD. Again, a Bill payment to the same RIGGIE ALVAREZ. No other transactions took place.
- On January and February, they were charged a Monthly Service fee of 25 USD and an overdraft fee of 34 USD. The overdraft fee took place on February 1st,.
- The same happened on March 2nd: they were charged another overdraft fee
My Father after reading this called the bank and reported the entire incident. They said that they were going to look into it and they were going to call him on the 23rd of this month to let him know the results of their investigation. That was on the 11th.
My father, being very worried about the whole thing, called today (4/15) to check if the bank had any news about their money. The guy at customer service told him that the bank decided that the transaction had taken place too long ago and that it was too late to even look into it. The most he can do is to try to appeal it, but the operator pretty much told him it was probably a lost cause. He appealed it anyway.
Needless to say we are very scared and don’t really know what to do or who to call for help. I don’t live on the states but have some good friends who do, but outside of them we are completely alone. Is there a government agency that helps with this sort of stuff? What can we do about it? Is there any way to get their money back? Is there anything we can do about it? We don’t care if it takes time.
We are also furious with the bank. I know that my father should have been a lot more diligent, but he doesn’t use the damn thing. My parents are really old-fashioned and not tech savvy. They don’t check their email much unless they have to. Heck, the entire point of opening the damn account there was to store their money in a supposedly safe place and not having to worry about it too much. The bank didn’t even tell my father how this guy was able to withdraw so much without the bank calling my parents, or if they validated the identity of my mother. My father asked for details about the recipient of the money but the operator said nothing. For all that I know, the bank could have just look at the timeline, decided that it was too long ago to bother and not even look into how the transaction took place.
Sorry for the rant but I am devastated. Someone stole their money and it seems there is nothing we can do about it.
Any help, no matter how miniscule would be greatly appreciated.
Edit: DO you know anywhere else where I could post this and get help?
Submitted April 15, 2021 at 10:15PM by pkbw96 https://ift.tt/3agR7gp
