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| Bank of America N.A. |
The scourge of the banking and financial services industry is employees who share customer information with unauthorized third parties or worse, who operate illegal sideline businesses selling private and confidential customer data.
Recipients of this stolen data include disreputable attorneys, journalists, private investigators and of course scam artists, including identity thieves.
This is not a new problem. In fact, over the decades, employees at some of America's biggest banks have been identified selling confidential customer information to persons who have absolutely no lawful purpose in acquiring it.
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| Data Breach Victim |
A bank with a long history of employees abusing the privacy and personal data safety of customers is
Bank of America. Even the president-elect of the United States,
Donald Trump, allegedly fell victim in the early 90's to executives at Bank of America (formerly
National Westminister Bank USA) sharing specific details relating to his then troubled loan accounts with unauthorized third parties.
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| National Westminster Bank USA |
National Westminster Bank USA was acquired by Fleet Financial in 1996 and in 2004, became part of what is today Bank of America.
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| Fleet Branch |
Some of the most egregious examples of bad behavior by employees at Bank of America over the past two decades included senior executives supporting (or at the very least turning a blind eye to) the use of identity fraud as a business tool to expedite debt collection operations.
In fact, loan officers and attorneys employed at the banks Managed Asset Divisions (also known as Corporate Services) located in Hartford, Connecticut, and Providence, Rhode Island, were allegedly observed using the services of identity fraudsters to speed-up debt collection operations using a social engineering technique known as "
pretexting."
Specific information sought often included customer data from competitor banks, payroll records from employers and even on occasion taxpayer data from government agencies.
To be fair, the identity fraudsters did purport to be licensed investigators and debt collectors. But surprisingly, no one at Bank of America ever bothered to check the validity of their credentials.
Meanwhile, the same fraudsters were also stealing Bank of America customer data and selling it on to practically anyone willing to pay for it.
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| Norwalk Savings Society |
They even managed to infiltrate a branch of the Norwalk Savings Society
(acquired by Summit Bancorp in 1999 and later incorporated into Bank of America in 2004) located in Norwalk, Connecticut to facilitate a sophisticated checking account scam targeting both consumers and small businesses located in the Northeast.
This necessitated bank employees retrieving and covertly forwarding on to the identity fraudsters sensitive overnight data received from the
Federal Reserve every morning.
In return, the bank's employees allegedly received various forms of compensation which included candy and flowers when a 'scammed victim' showed up at the branch asking some awkward questions or worse causing a scene.
For those victims (which included Bank of America customers) who did manage to identify and report this widespread unlawful conduct to the authorities, the retribution was often swift at the hands of both the corrupt bank employees and contractors.
The punishment meted out often included harassing phone calls day and night, repeated threats of physical violence, blackmail and intimidation along with the victim's personal credit being hijacked and systematically trashed over an extended period.
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| Bank of America Regulator |
But perhaps most surprising of all, was the fact that local and state law enforcement authorities were allegedly kept off the case by highly protective bank regulators.
Allegedly this included the
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) who reportedly cited 'federal preemption' laws when intentionally shielding corrupt Bank of America's employees and contractors from possible prosecution by local jurisdictions.
To paraphrase two OCC officials who spoke 'on the record' in 1998 and 2010, "the function of the Comptroller's Office is to ensure the safety and security of the banks it supervises and not necessarily the interests of the American public."
How deeply troubling is that?
Both Governor Roy Cooper and North Carolina Department of Transport Secretary, James H. Trogdon III have to explain to young drivers and their parents why the safety and integrity of their personally identifiable information (which includes name, address, date-of-birth, drivers license particulars and Social Security number) are being placed at risk on a daily basis by consumer reporting agencies, data brokers, and so-called insurance industry support organizations.
