Happy

Exactly. Citi has to give clear definition of "fraud" in order to justify this reason being used to close accounts, on accounts that only used less than 3% of total credit line availed by Citi, and less than 10% credit line on card itself, for an item that is widely available and bought by consumers in many stores nationwide. No where in writing of all the T&Cs that "fraud activity" is defined.

Thank you for doing that. Hopefully we at least get some opinions from the professionals.

Marathon Man

haha oh that would SO happen!

ma91pmh

Everyone who has been shut down - please PM me as much info as you can in particular I need to get copies of the contractual terms & conditions provided with the card. I am going to review with lawyer friend. I am told that arbitration clause is not necessarily deal killer, but for sure those of you with older cards with no arb clause are going to be the best.

also i need to get a sense of how much everyone has had confiscated. unless the total is big, we will struggle to get the time of premier league lawyer. but we might be able to get a competent lower division player

And also if people can think about the cash advance fees. I will do a separate solicitation on this in another post but I want to start getting a sense of how big an initial pool we could pull together

lacuadra

Why is buying gift cards fraud? I have done it in the past and everybody I know does it. I am not talking Vanilla Reload or such, but cards like Kohls or Amazon or iTunes. Why is this fraud?

And another question, it seems that this is so related to TYP, why then does Citi "lose" money with gift cards purchased say at Staples?

reft

The issue is probably with 'cash equivalent instruments' GC's such as Visa, AMEX and MC gift cards.

A iTunes card is good for songs and apps, you can't [easily?] get the cash back out. If I give you a Kohl's card, you can probably get the leftovers in cash after a purchase, but probably not full cash value. I don't know if you can reverse an Amazon card, but if you did it a lot, you'd probably show up on someone's radar...and not in a good way.

One story is Drug dealers and other folks who need to move money around w/o getting caught were sending empty reloadables out of the country, loading them here and the money instantly shows up 'there' courtesy of MC/VS/AMEX. So the [US] government got interested, called it terrorism and pulled out the broad brush. Companies like Citi just don't want to deal with the paperwork, so they shoot anything with hoofbeats and don't take the time to determine of it's a Zebra or a Horse.

The two keywords here are "Money Laundering" and "Structuring" the latter term is when you avoid an STR (Suspicious Transfer Report) you do a number of transactions below the number ($10,000) So now a number of translations below the number starts to look suspicious.

Happy

I literally asked the caller similar questions - what about buying a iTune, Home Depot or whatever you, gift card at the drug store or grocery store? What about buying an Amazon gift card at Staples? What about use a no category bonus card buying gift card? Would that be classified "Fraud" or not? She has no answer. She said she needed to consult Citi's legal department. She emphasize earning bonus points on buying GC is considered "Fraud" by Citi, regardless how little you have bought.

She said Citi only intended for people to buy the "real stuff" at CVS, not gift cards. Yes, this is verbatim of what she said, buying gift cards at CVS is abusing the program.

No Money Laundering / Structuring or anything like that ever enter the conversation. The Structuring doesn't have any remote relationship in GC purchase because it relates to Cash deposits made at a bank in a given period. Last I know, GCs cannot be deposited to your bank account, regardless whether it is AMEX, VISA or MC.

The above poster's drug dealer "story" does not hold any water because GCs purchased after some date in 2012, CANNOT be used outside US. You would hear that message when you call for the balance of your GC.

nwflyboy

Fraud? Did you say FRAUD?

Everyone who was shut down by WF (hand raised...) got an email from WF informing us our WF debit card was closed due to fraud.

BS. No "fraud" at all. Just something that they had not expected and didn't like. So they cry "fraud!" to cover their a$$. Sound familiar, former TYP account holders?

@ma91pmh - you might want to mention that to to your buddy, too. No retroactive phone recordings needed - many of us have the email. No violation of T&C.

The spurious charge of "fraud" is their magic card that they all play when they discover they set up their business sloppily with loopholes that could be easily exploited. Every one of these companies falls back on that lie.

Time for someone to teach them a lesson?

Marathon Man

Exactly

And this is why i have sued several banks and financial institutions--many of which i have nor will never mention here for various reasons.

I have won nearly all of them too.

I suggested people sue wf in that thread for a reason. Hint hint.

I am not trying to be sue happy--like the guy from the jerky boys who sues everybody lol. No, not at all. My pain is that i/we run into issues with deals where oh so many companies big and small try to eff us and we just have to fight back and say no. They will try it because of greed. They try to stop us saying we are scammers and greedy mongers. Maybe we all are but thats all it is: a game of wits where one side is pushing on the other.

Fraud and laundering and all that shite is so wrongly over used that saying the terms alone should be a criminal offense in themselves. It sickens me in fact how much they are given as reasons for stopping everything. No wonder the effing economy is slowed! Real terrorists and criminals are way ahead--these stupid notions just slow down all the rest of the nations consumers big and small. I hate it.

Anyway i figure when they get me, its because of numbers and its because i fit a profile in their sets of algorythms. Like all those who have been shut down. Sad but true.

But as ive said already long ago in this thread, fraud is a word about criminal activity. What we do is not that. You could sue em for slander too

AscorbylPalmitate

libel

Alcibiades

So she is going to call you back after consulting with Legal ?

Marathon Man

Lol yah
Well i havent had to play that card yet

Bender464

a little late now...

Marathon Man

She will never call

So happy should give her a few days and call HER saying, hey you said you would check w legal... And record the convo!

Then give her the names of incomm, metabank, and several others who make and distribute gcs and tell her to investigate if they are all comitting fraud too. Bring them as well as cvs into the suit just to overwelhm the be-atch

Happy

No such promise. She did agree to send a letter but said customer cannot dictate what Citi would word its letter despite she said buying GC at CVS consists "Fraud" when I requested this to be spelled out in the letter.

AMEX does not think it is fraud, nor other banks AFAIK.

shel

They think they have a right to profit. Otherwize, it must be "fraud" and it's taxpayer's duty to bail them out.