America’s biggest bank is being sued for allegedly terminating several accounts and failing to ensure more than a million dollars was returned to its rightful owners.
Rui Wang and Hengchen Qu, mother and son, have reportedly filed a lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase Bank for alleged unjust enrichment and breach of contract related to certificates of deposit (CDs).
Think Advisor reports that in 2019, they purchased three automatically renewable nine-month CDs totaling $1.16 million at a Chase branch in Arcadia, California.
CDs are financial products that offer a fixed amount of yield for a deposit which is typically only withdrawable after a predetermined length of time.
The complaint says that when the customers arrived back in California after being in China, they visited their Chase branch to discover that the bank had closed their accounts. The bank said it had mailed checks back to Wang and Qu for reimbursement.
But the pair says they never received the checks and don’t even know where the money was supposed to be sent.
States the complaint,
“The staff stated that the CD accounts had been closed and three checks, each representing the fund therein, had been mailed to the address provided by plaintiffs, which were not received by, or even known to, plaintiffs.”
After requesting that the checks be reissued, an assistant vice president reportedly asked the two customers to provide the numbers of the checks. However, the plaintiffs say that’s impossible for them to do.
The suit demands Chase return the funds, and says that Wang and Qu “have suffered financial losses for their failure to access the funds they needed.”
A Chase spokesperson says the bank has no comment on the lawsuit.
