THE PRESIDENT'S A PAST VICTIM TOO!

President Trump

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.

A bank with a long history of employees abusing the privacy and personal data safety of customers is Bank of America.  

Even the President 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.

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.

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 Division (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.

OCC Seal

But perhaps most surprising of all was the fact that local and state law enforcement authorities were aware of this unlawful conduct but allegedly kept off the case by highly protective bank regulators.

This included the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency(OCC) which 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 troubling is that?