<br />yes, it happened to me two/three years ago. I was not even MSing on BoA cards, but churned BoA AS cards.

like someone said, its the MS. i almost bet its a combo of various things you did. churn abuse? massive ramp up in accounts with bfoA or other banks? all your MS at GC.com? Simon? can you give us more of a complete roadmap of your stats? would be a huge help if u outlined a few things like the reddit chase shutdown thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/churning/co...rts_megathread). would help us see more of what happened.

but you are right to be surprised. BofA was never a heavy shutdown bank. but now, everyone abusing BofA so they are much wiser and can see an uptick in shady activity. its a sad time now. so much crap is being killed off daily.

can you give us more detail about your SO? this sounds extremely unlucky when compared with other abusers who do way more than your stats. i dont get how freedom cat MS can shut u down with those numbers. good luck with the appeal and check out the chase shutdown megathread. a few got reinstated with stats totally worse than yours.

wondering a few things.
1) after adding CC to mobile, how long did you wait for the MS purchase? did you try to buy something immediately? is the CC new?
2) what did you try buying and how much? whats the CL? was it a clear uptick in spend?
3) did you clear the fraud alert by calling or via SMS or email? if you called, it could be eyes on account.
4) when did the account become suspended after the attempted purchase? how long did it take? when did the 10 day review start?

i hope you guys dont have the same address.

Sorry to hear this.
Were you only MSing on your CC? Do you have any organic charges on your CC?

yes, they were linked. there was organic spend as well, since bofa travel cards are my regular card for general use.

My concern now will be any consequences from Bofa side? I worry about my credit cards from Bofa.

you still havent given us any detail to speculate on what may happen to your accounts. see my prior posts. what did your UPS mailer say? it would help all of us and maybe even yourself if you provided more details. for all we know, you hit that crap so hard, investment AML KYC BSA kicked in first and closed risky exposure levels which is tied to SEC NASD FINRA regulation. which means your unsecured loans will also close ASAP with only slight delay. should you worry about your other bofA cards? um, probably. your entire account may get closed too if they are shutting down your 100k ML account first which is a liquid asset. hence, i was asking for more detail. not sure if pple here are assuming BofA and ML are two different companies tied loosely via online login? no. thats not how it works. bofa acquired ML in an all-stock deal worth $50 billion a decade ago due to the 2008 crisis. they are now BFF but legally separate entities.

UPS mailer says that according to the agreement, ML is exercising an option to close an account. And they give me few choices what to do with my investments - sell them, transfer to another account, etc. They give me 30 days to do so.
As I said before, I don't do any crazy activity on my bofa cards. MS was in form gc.com purchases, mixed with regular spend. I always paid off balances before the statement closes. No simon purchases, no active churning of cards. May be they didn't like an idea that parking $100K+ on ML gives you free trades, and also Preferred Honors status that gives 75% extra on earning points on Bofa Travel cards.

BTW, ML account was joint account with my wife, who also has 2 Bofa cards, which were used to MS - 6K each on 30K CL limit. So, in total we MS on 4 cards from Bofa.

appreciate the detail. its starting to make a bit more sense, altho i am still very shocked at the ML response vs your "low" volume. times have changed. unfortunately, "low volume" and "dont do crazy activity on BofA CC" is very subjective. depends on who you ask. ive seen idiot posts about how some think 50k/mo MS on a CC is "not much". yea, not much relative to others who do 100k+/mo but a bank will still see that crap. SMH. anyway, let me get this straight, so you have 4 CC w/ BofA w/ the wife and usually spend ~$6K on each card, monthly? so 24k total from GC.com monthly? no churning AS CC abuse?

my first response is shock. to me, i agree that is fairly "low vol" and its spread over 4 CC. but at the same time, its a very clear GC.com purchase multiple times on multiple cards. and you already know shady crap happens with GC and banks know about it. meaning, frequent GC.com purchases on multiple cards per month consistently tripped some kind of AML KYC BSA response. I just didnt think BofA would pull a USB on you. How long have you been buying GC.com? years?

the reason why your ML account went first is because investment vehicles are even under more scrutiny under SEC NASD FINRA. they take absolutely no BS unlike your CC accounts. this is also why many times you see deposit accounts go first vs getting CC shut down. and this also ties back to why people always say DO NOT dump your MO into checking accounts with CCs that you want to keep because its under different regulation. So did you ever dump any MO in BofA? I assume no.

but here are my other thoughts:

1) based on everything you said, it looks like your MS from gc.com purchases was too obvious and tripped some type of review, but still in shock about your relatively low vol. can you think of anything else? you said no major churning. then how about MO depo? or anything with your wifes accounts? or anything in your CR? any recent crap that showed up on your credit reports or even your CHEX? any other bank or CC shut downs? im trying to think of all the avenues here because i am surprised. altho GC.com purchases on multiple cards are too obvious.

2) The shut down has nothing to do with your ML free trades, and Preferred Honors status that gives 75% extra on earning points on Bofa Travel cards

3) do you plan to call BofA or ML and figure out what is up? maybe useless but i guess it wouldnt hurt to try and see what happened. altho pretty sure they wont say crap to you anyway.

4) its up to you, but I personally would just close all BofA relationships ASAP first thing monday. do it first before they do it if you value a future BofA relationship. some may argue that its OK to leave accounts open with BofA, but if you care anything about playing with BofA in the sandbox ever again, I would take first mover advantage ASAP on monday and their notation will go down as "closed by customer" vs your ML accounts which already has a black mark tied to your SSN. this probably means you cant open another ML account ever, but getting future BofA CC should be OK since they may not cross ref with ML if you stick with only BofA accounts and CC and never touch ML again. not 100% sure, but its an educated guess based on the segregation of entities. but if your CC are still active, i assume you have some choices left. so if you want to play with BofA ever again, why risk it? otherwise, yea, just wait and see what happens. but an earlier poster already had a BofA shut down experience and noted all CC accounts were closed based on AS CC churn abuse.

5) i assume you already have a plan to move your investment assets to schwab, fidelity, or some other discount brokerage firm? just wondering since i know Ally is fairly cheap vs the competition and they just acquired TradeKing

Thanks for your lengthy response.
I used gc.com for years. My last Bofa applications were long time ago (2016). I have bofa checking (as well as my wife), but I never deposited MOs up there, since I didn't want a shutdown.
I plan to call ML this morning, but I'm sure they wouldn't tell me a reason.

What is with the terms abusing and shady activity? MS folk operate in a straight forward manner - it is not like we illegally foreclose on homes, lauder money for Mexican drug dealers or game Libor rates like bankers. No somos como las ratas del banco. :rolleyes:

Does your credit score drop when the bank shuts down your CC?.. Thanks

I'm assuming because it directly impacts your AAoA or something else? If it's something else, what's the magnitude of the drop? Asking for a friend.

I think the AAoA is not necessarily adversely affected, but it could be. More likely the credit utilization will go up because your friend will have less total credit available (and credit utilization is a large component of credit score).

I've had cards canceled by the bank and it wasn't a big deal. In my case the impact to my credit score was negligible.

i see. to me, youre really DL with BofA, but I guess somehow eyes got on your GC.com over the years and they decided to put the breaks on. again, im still in shock. times have changed. be sure to decide ASAP on your other BofA accounts if they matter to you. good luck and keep us posted.

well ADK, someone like you already knows the dilemma of mistaken identity with MSers vs money launderers. GC fraud and MO is the tool of choice for criminals to move funds, including BTC. matter of fact, i would bet criminals love reading FT, churning blogs and MS reddit posts so they can fly J/F while stealing peoples IDs and money. we use the same financial freeway as they do and authorities have to distinguish who is legit which they cant and do not bother to care. they would rather play it safe and bust out a huge shut down blanket.

shut down story time for our FYI?

Meh - this is FAKE AML! GC fraud and MO is too amateur hour for real ML. Come down to Miami and see how it is really done! The millions we store in Homer buckets in our attics is not held in MOs and they weren't smelting illegal plastic in that recent $3.6 billion gold sting. You really think any self respecting drug dealer in Miami would be caught flipping gift cards in a Walmart? Busting out the big shut down blanket on MS is so wrong. I have talked to AML folk who know the MS game but play Kabuki for the benefit of their auditors. I can't think of one bank caught laundering drug money by someone depositing even a few hundred thousand a year in MOs. Pablo Escobar enterraría todo su efectivo en el suelo antes de tratar de limpiarlo en Walmart.

I grew up in Miami and I can confirm. Was a kid in the 70s and 80s but know enough from my dad (who worked in construction during that time) to know that stuff is correct. I think big time narcotics folks would laugh at the notion that MOs is the way to go for them.

ADK, are you a native Miamian? My family lives there and I still go back often but I haven't lived there in 15 years.

Re AAoA, I believe closed accounts still get factored into AAoA through 10 years after closing, so it would eventually affect it.

Besides overall CL and thus utilization, I wonder if recon reps look at accounts that have a note to the effect of "closed by bank" and factor that negatively beyond what their computer generated risk score & model. I have no idea but if I had to guess I'd say prob not with 'regular' consumers, i.e. the ones who don't have many recent accounts open or high utilization ratio, but might affect their decision with one of us (one of us, one of us!).

No, I'm not a Miami native - just here about 5 years now. I grew up a few miles from what was then the #1 Mexican heroin importing city, Guadalupe, California in a county where bales of pot washed ashore regularly just like here in South Florida. For over 20 years I lived in one of the top 10 money laundering cities, San Antonio, Texas which catered to the Mexican Mafia. As a longtime auditor and fraud examiner who attending many FBI presentations on ML I might know a little about how real ML works.

BTW, word on the street down here in Miami is that the boys are back in business surpassing cowboy volumes. These days the drugs come in by sea rather than air. The overly ostentatious cars are appearing again and in my building we have at least one convicted dealer we could not kick out.

Now we have a new game in town - stealing credit cards to buy gift cards to buy 100 plus gallons of gas at a time to store in tricked out trucks and vans with tanks and bladders. The gas is then resold to the gas stations. This is similar to the game played in Houston after the last hurricane where some businesses and homes became impromptu tank farms.

1. SHUTdn by Schw@b (brokerage + checking)
2. Opened 01.17
3. Average daily balance last 12 mo = $4k; last 4 mo = $5.8k
4. Average MO monthly deposit volume last 12 mo = $10k; last 4 mo = $14.7k; last month was highest at $17.9k

Received a reasonably friendly call yesterday afternoon letting me know that they’d made the decision to close my account. As expected, they wouldn’t provide a reason. They are giving a full month to drain the checking account and are allowing withdrawals and transfers out but not deposits. I received a letter today via UPS basically confirming the conversation.

Since I knew I would regret it later if I didn’t exercise the option, I cashed out 160k MRs last night (worth 1.25¢ ea when you have their AX). The $2k appeared in my brokerage account this morning. However, the option to transfer between brokerage and any other account (internal or external) is gone, so I have to request a wire ($25) or paper check to clear these funds.

I signed up for the accounts after hearing an FTU speaker recommend them as very MO friendly and never having issues with $5k deposits multiple times per week. I made 99% of deposits in a branch (which only allows them to go into brokerage) and then transferred them to checking the next day. All interactions in multiple states were always friendly and no one ever questioned the MOs (typically $3-$5k). There was one branch manager who encouraged me to use mobile deposit just to save me from having to come in, but I only did that a couple of times (and only one MO per day) as that seemed riskier to me. I never deposited anything other than MOs, nor did I use the brokerage for any trading. I regularly ACH'd from checking to some external accounts to hit monthly DD minimums.

He said the AX card would get closed on its own sometime after my accounts, as holding it requires a brokerage relationship. Fortunately I’m in my renewal window and can cancel it and not have to pay the AF.

Really sad to end this relationship as everyone was always friendly and helpful, but it was a good run.

They actually make lots of money on MS. The problem is they are running scared because of fear of government regulations. They don't even care to make a basic inquiry that would show MS is perfectly legitimate. It would be wise to withdraw any rewards on the cards immediately as BA has a bad habit of confiscating everything.

Would you mind sharing which speaker peddled this institution at FTU?

The basic advice of don't defecate where you eat should have applied even back then.

I deposit MO at Schwab on two events, I win at the casino and don't feel like keeping that much cash on hand or when there's a GC sale at OD/OM. The account is too valuable to risk losing for MS. Schwab is my hub account where all payroll goes into and I have regular recurring ACH transfers out to an external managed brokerage account as well as one other savings account. I believe even when I did do a more significant amount of MO's a month (probably never exceeded $10k) the other behavior probably mitigated that.

Edit: Just noticed you said you never deposited anything other than MO into the account so my question doesn't matter. Did you ever deposit into the checking or was it always into brokerage and then transfer? That might have done it as well.

Paypal counting towards MS
 

I know most of the folks here are spending a lot in VGC-WM and after a scary call yesterday, I freaked out. Got a call from Chase fraud and said "Oh boy.. here we go". I have a new Ink Plus and already hit the spend through a lot of organic spend and maybe 2k of VGC, spread out. I don't have a chase checking/savings, all deposits were in various savings/checks I have at different institutions.

Anyway, fortunately, they were calling as I had recently placed an extended fraud alert on my account as my identity was recently stolen and a lot of department store cards were opened in my name. They saw the extended alert was just placed on my credit report and were calling to verify that the accounts I had, were legitimately mine. Phew. So all is well there. But, I was sweating bullets thinking that was the call of death. Luckily, I dodged a bullet.

But, on to my question - I have purchased a bunch of deal cards on eBay, which are paid with Paypal. Most are restaurants that I visit, some I'll resell. Do you think these Paypal purchases would (I know anything "could") trigger an MS alarm? Regardless, I'm going to make sure I have more organic spend than anything else. But, since I won't have a bunch of VGC purchases from the usual spots, I didn't know if the Paypal thing would raise a flag. I don't go anywhere near my credit limits in terms of overspending and do have a lot of organic spend on the cards I've used. With the exception of the Ink, the cards have been open for quite some time. Didn't see any DP's as to whether the Paypal digital gifts might trigger an alert - or if it'd just appear (likely) as a regular Ebay type purchase.

TIA!

Hmmm if you're so deathly afraid of a bank, maybe they're not right for you. Whatever benefits you think you're getting from them can't be worth so much stress.
As far as PayPal Digital Gifts, banks would know that GC can be quickly unloaded. So just in case your purchase was not legit, Chase didn't want to be left holding the bag.

I'm fine with banks. My poetic justice was simply trying to set the tone that I was hoping it wouldn't mean the loss of the UR's as I never received such a call and didn't know what they wanted at first. Judging by the posts here, MANY have faced similar questions/concerns/guidance with potential shutdown.

The charges, are in fact, legit. I didn't see any DP's regarding any PPDG's as an MS-concerning, I've seen reference to the usual VGC->MO, which is why I was asking.

Fraud Prevention does not have MS alarms. Fraud deals with transactions being properly authorized. MS detection happens in other departments. Too much MS can make you appear unprofitable to the bank. You have not dodged that bullet, but it's also unlikely that you're in the cross-hairs based on your mix of spending.

If they are going to shut you down, they aren't going to call you and tell you.

Got snail mail from hsbc that my savings account would be shut down. I thought weird i have no MS with them. Then I recall during the coin days I had a mortgage with them and I would go to the bank to pay my mortgage and the also deposit like 10-20k at a time in my savings in dollar coins, I would do this weekly or so. I figured since I had a mortgage they couldnt shut me down and I was right until they did shut me down but only my savings.

So I xfer my money out and then two weeks later i get another letter saying sorry we sent the shut down letter as an error please accept our apologies. So weird.

Maybe you can get them to give you a $100-200 bonus for opening a new account :eek::p

Be afraid, my friends, very afraid
 

I think a good many people are afraid of banks. Those that hold mortgages are afraid of illegal foreclosures. Those who hold bank loans are afraid of illegal LIBOR rate gaming. Those who are morally opposed to banks laundering Mexican drug cartel money are afraid of finding their bank in the headlines (again). Some folks are afraid of banks shutting down their accounts and sending a letter that it was all a mistake. Other folks are afraid that their bank will pull a Wells Fargo and illegally open accounts in their name. And although we have long known that banks are infested with rats, we now know that banks actually pay teams of them to bite customers. During the financial crisis banks went broke, yet managed to suck money from taxpayers like Anne Rice's Lestat. And don't even get me started on those damn zombie banks. Be afraid, my friends, very afraid.

Had an interesting call with C@p0ne today about what triggers fraud reviews and could possibly be related to some of the Ch@se shutdowns we have seen. I know we have discussed POSSIBLE triggers, but I don't think we have ever gotten firm numbers. Well on my call (everything worked out, they just had to verify a payment account) with the fraud department, while we were on hold, he spilled the beans on what actually triggers it with quantifiable numbers. He said that an account goes into review if these two qualifications are met:

1) Payment from more than 2 accounts in a 90 day period
2) Payments that are different by more than 10% (ie a payment of 5k and 4k would trigger, but 5k and 4.5k wouldn't)

Ch@se probably isn't EXACTLY the same, but could help anyone with trying to avoid a shutdown...

What if u paid directly at the bank with MO?

#2 doesn't make sense. Balance is not always vary by 10% so payment amount will not necessarily be 10% different