We know what’s coming and we are prepared.
On January 29, Anne Marie Murphy and two of her colleagues at law firm Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP in Santa Monica, California filed a lawsuit in Superior Court on behalf of a 76-year old widow, Diane Artemis Yaffe.
Scammers had tricked Ms. Yaffe into making seven wire transfers out of her Chase Bank account, which tallied up to the astonishing sum of $1.8 million, or the bulk of her funds at the time.
There are three things which jump out of the factual details in the case that would appear to be legally problematic for Chase Bank – the federally-insured, retail banking unit of JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. First, the six figure wires were completely out-of-character for this elderly client. Second, the huge sums were being wired out of the country. Third, the funds that Chase Bank wired were originally at Bank of America and were only transferred to Chase Bank because Bank of America had the good sense to refuse to make the wire transfers for this elderly widow.
But rather than accept responsibility and make the widow whole, JPMorgan Chase has hired the international corporate law firm, Steptoe, to represent it in the court case. The bank has also forced the removal of the case out of state court to federal court (a move which is being very competently challenged by Ms. Yaffe’s attorneys), and appears ready to engage in copious motions to drag out the case.
Knowing this bank’s history of felony counts and an unprecedented rap sheet, it occurred to us that these fraudulent wire transfers might not be an isolated event at Chase Bank. We went to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB’s) complaint database and put “Chase Bank wire fraud” in the search box. It brought up 558 responses.
If you consider that possibly one out of 50 Americans know about the CFPB’s complaint database and fewer still would take the time to file a complaint as opposed to going to law enforcement, the 558 complaints involving wire fraud appear to us to be deeply concerning. In addition, the dates of the filing of the complaints show that dozens of the complaints have occurred in the past six months in widely dispersed geographic areas including California, New York, Oregon, Colorado, Arizona, Texas and Ohio, among others.
On April 4 of this year, the CFPB received the following report from a Chase Bank customer in New York: (Redacted information, indicated by Xs, is how the complaint appears on the CFPB website.)
“On XX/XX/2024, a total of {$130000.00} was wired out of my bank accounts with Chase Bank in New York without my authorization. I never send wires for more than a few XXXX dollars. I was not notified or warned by Chase. Usually they send an email advising when a wire transfer is made. This did not happen…To my immense horror, Chase had no interest in pursuing a serious investigation….”
CFPB received this complaint from a Chase Bank customer in Colorado on April 2:
“If you are a JPMorgan Chase customer be aware!!!!!! I was a victim of a non-authorized wire transfer within my JP Morgan Chase banking account. JPMC bank is refusing to help me get my {$9200.00} that was fraudulently stolen from my account because they say there is nothing they can do, that the $ was NOT stolen from them-JPM Chase but from me personally.”
On April 1, a California couple wrote in their CFPB complaint that they had rushed to their local Chase Bank branch to stop a suspected fraudulent wire transfer and a Chase Bank employee indicated that the hacker was cloning an actual Chase Bank phone number to commit the wire fraud. The complaint states the following:
“On XX/XX/24 multiple accounts at Chase Bank where simultaneously hit with wire fraud. We have NEVER used wires before. These hackers were so sophisticated that they were able to first do inter bank transfers from both of my daughters savings accounts (which I am on ) into my and my husbands savings accounts ( which I am on, but they are not ). And then from my savings account, wired out three sums of money simultaneously to three different US banks/credit unions… When we ask Chase how this happened, we get a different story every time, and now we get no response at all…[After going to the bank branch…] I put the call on speaker. XXXX immediately recognized the phone number as the desk sitting next to her. Caught on camera, you can see my husband and XXXX go to the EMPTY desk that the spoof call was supposedly coming from. She was SHOCKED that the hackers able to impersonate Chase….”
In multiple cases, the Chase Bank customers’ cell phones were involved, suggesting that bank account information had been stored on the cell phone, which was then hacked by the scammer. In one case, the individual had taken her computer to be serviced and experienced a fraudulent wire transfer shortly thereafter, suggesting that the bank account details had been stolen during the servicing of the computer.
Given the mushrooming problems being reported with mobile banking and payment apps and identity theft, as well as fraudulent wire transfers, it should go without saying that one should exercise extreme caution in where and how bank account numbers and passwords are stored and with whom they are shared.
Ukrainian forces have begun training and testing exoskeletons for battlefield use. Soldiers from the 147th Separate Artillery Brigade are using them in the Pokrovsk sector for both logistics and frontline operations. The goal is to reduce physical strain, especially when loading heavy artillery shells into howitzers without automatic loaders. Artillery crews can handle up to 1200 kg of ammunition per day, and early tests show that exoskeletons help them work faster and with less fatigue Above all, by improving the conditions for those soldiers on the front lines who handle such heavy loads, plus the stress of work. Seeking to reduce overall fatigue in the troops
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🇮🇷🇮🇱 - 14 wounded in Iranian missile strike in central Israel, according to Israeli media.
🇬🇧🇮🇶 - A drone struck British Castrol oil warehouses in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, causing extensive damage.
🇮🇷🇮🇱 - Iran launched 9 missiles towards Israel this morning alone, with at least 3 of them being cluster missiles.
🇱🇧🇮🇱 - Over the past 12 hours, Hezbollah launched counterattacks in Khiam and Qantara, in the Nabatieh direction, southeast Lebanon. Hezbollah recaptured northern Khiam, with fighting ongoing for the south of the town. Hezbollah units also re-entered Qantara; frontline sources reported clashes in the center of the town last night.
🇱🇧🇮🇱 - 48 IDF soldiers have been wounded in clashes with Hezbollah over the last 24 hours in southern Lebanon, according to the Israeli Army.
🇱🇧🇮🇱 - "The Israeli army is barely catching its breath in southern Lebanon, and its resources are less than in the previous round of fighting," - Haaretz....
🇺🇸 Blue Owl Capital just disclosed that investors tried to pull 40.7% of one fund and 21.9% of another in a single quarter, and both funds gave the same answer, you can only have 5% back, and everyone else waits in line.
This is a bank run, not a normal withdrawal.
Wall Street spent the last decade selling millions of investors on something called semi-liquid private credit, higher yields, steady income and the promise you could get your money back every quarter if you needed it. What they buried in the fine print was what happens when too many people try to leave at the same time.
Analysts who have covered private credit for decades say nothing on this scale has ever been reported before at any major private credit manager.
These funds do not hold stocks you can sell on a Tuesday afternoon, they hold private loans to mid sized companies that cannot be liquidated quickly without destroying the price for every investor still trapped inside.
This product was originally designed for ...
🇺🇸 President Trump wants to switch to war economy in 2027 with massive increase in military spending and massive cuts to healthcare and other domestic agencies
Once a deficit hawk — he said in 2016 that he thought he could balance the budget in five years — Trump ended his first term with $7.8 trillion in added debt. His 2027 proposal is expected to give an update on 10-year deficit projections currently estimated at around $16 trillion.
The GOP's message for the Midterms will be focused on the "need" for a massive defense build up while the Democrats' message will be focused on affordability.
The fiscal 2027 budget will be the first time Trump puts his second-term governing agenda into one comprehensive document — with the numbers to back it up. The budget he released last year lacked detailed line-by-line spending targets and the economic assumptions necessary to project the long-term cost of his proposals.
Investors in US Treasuries will be looking to see if the debt and ...
