Bank of America owes over $200 million to customers after botching unemployment payments during pandemic

We’re learning more about how Bank of America will repay customers, after regulators say the North Carolina-based bank botched the disbursement of state unemployment benefits at the height of the pandemic.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency both issued fines last week totaling $225 million dollars. They also ordered the bank to provide back pay to customers who should have been able to collect the benefits but could not, due to the actions of the bank.

The CFPB told 5 On Your Side that people who were impacted will not have to do anything to get a check for money they were wrongly denied. Each customer can also apply for an additional lump sum payment. Customers will be contacted with more information about how to file a claim.

“We estimate the harm payments will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” said Deborah Morris, who oversaw the Bank of America investigation for the CFPB.

The $100 million dollar fine handed down by the CFPB is one of the largest it’s imposed, as big as the Equifax breach and the Wells Fargo fake account scandal.

Morris says the bank caused real harm to people in need during the pandemic.

“Eviction, car repossession, some of these consumers were without access to their accounts for several months,” she said.

The bank handled prepaid debit cards for the unemployment benefits on behalf of 12 states: Arizona, California, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey, Nevada and South Carolina.

In an attempt to prevent and limit fraud and identity theft among those making unemployment claims, the bank went too far, according to the CFPB.

Bank of America's fraud detection program automatically froze suspicious accounts and, according to the CFPB, "made it very difficult for people to unfreeze their prepaid debit cards or for people to report fraudulent use of their cards."

Asked about the fines, Bank of America issued this statement:

“Bank of America was hired by states to administer unemployment payments and the states were responsible for reviewing and approving applications and directing us to issue payments. Bank of America’s support to the states enabled the government to successfully issue more than $250 billion in pandemic unemployment benefits to more than 14 million people and overall distributed more pandemic relief to Americans than any other bank. In addition, we provided assistance to millions more by deferring mortgage, credit card and other payments.

This action arose despite the government’s own acknowledgement that the unemployment program expansion during the pandemic created unprecedented criminal activity where illegal applicants were able to get states to approve tens of billions of dollars in payments. Bank of America partnered with our state clients to identify and fight fraud throughout the pandemic. For example, we worked with California to identify hundreds of thousands of suspicious cards and assisted the state in protecting billions of dollars.”