Bank Of America stole my drive-through cash deposit lathe, Kansas

I am a teller for a very large bank, not BoA.
Cash-in (money included in a deposit) is counted and recorded on a separate 'receipt'. This then goes with the teller's paperwork and is sent to central processing.
The teller in question here either pocketed your cash without processing that 'receipt' or her/his cash drawer showed an overage at the end of the shift.
Central monitoring processes the paperwork they receive. If there was no 'receipt' sent to them, your account is debited.
So it sounds like you dealt with a very dishonest teller.
For the most part we are honest. Having a job is more important than risking losing everything for a few dollars.
But please, do us a favor. Have your items ready and correctly filled out before you drive up to that window, especially if there are quite a few cars there. We don't check your addition and we don't correct mistakes you make when filling out your deposit slips. We process exactly what we're given by the client. When the drive thru is busy we don't have time to scrutinize each client's paperwork. Do you want to have to wait in line more than a few minutes at the drive thru? Didn't think so.
As for BoA...
Although I work for their competition I have my accounts with BoA. I have yet to have them make a mistake on my deposits and I've been with them for many years.
In the past when I have had a complaint regarding money illegally taken out of my account (by eBay) BoA put the money back and went after eBay for it.
I wouldn't bank anywhere else.

I lost my job with Bank of America in August 2004. You want to talk about greedy, my job was transfered to associates that had little experience and were paid thousands less than me. I never use a Bank of America drive-up. The reason - most don't have security cameras looking at the drive-up tellers or the customers. If you go into the inside of the bank there is at least 1 camera looking over each lobby teller and the customer, but in the drive-up area NONE. i would contact the police and make the bank pull the security tape (if they have one). Most tapes are saved for at least 6 months before they are re-recorded over. Also tellers are required to add up all cash for every deposit. the tranaction should also have a cash in ticket that the machine will print the amount of the cash received by the teller. this ticket goes with the deposit slip and all your checks. those are then sent down to the proof department. they are also trained to put a letter C or a checkmark next to any cash received so the proof department knows that cash was received with this transaction. this was the training i went through and to the best of my knowledge it hasn't changed. The best part of the system the teller uses; it doesn't even keep track of each transaction on paper. They use an electronic journal. the electronic journal does keep track if the person used the calculator on the system to add up the cash. If there is anything else i can help you with please feel free to ask.

File the formal complaint. The bank will have one hell of a time explaining why a teller would show an $80 deposit on the receipt and then later deny ever receiving it. Also, once a police criminal investigation is started the federal banking regulators will automatically get involved. This should really get things moving.

It's interesting that banks allow a single teller to handle cash at these drive-through windows. It's not like being directly in front of the teller at a walkup window. The teller in this case would be hard pressed to find a way to skim the cash from a deposit. At a drive-through it would not be much of a challenge. Banks always require 2 tellers to be present when counting cash deposits from ATM machines. They should require the same at drive-throughs.

Bank of America HAS to steal from everyone so it can continue to fight it's legal battles and pay its fines. This bank has been implicated in every huge case of corporate fraud in the past few years!

They even get to screw over non-customers by fiddling with the bond market, ensuring that people all over America and the world get hit in the pocketbook.

Call the police, contact the OCC, but don't be surprised if you get little or no help from either. It seems as though everyone in the organization has a "thieves mentality". Bank officers and tellers are on the take (or just taking?) And the penalty thus far has been paltry when compared to the earnings.

Bail NOW! Let this sorry bunch of greed-mongers go belly up. Just make sure they don't take YOU with them!

Teflon Bank
Bernard Condon, 09.20.04
(Forbes Magazine)

One embarrassing disclosure after another hits the Bank of America, but none of the dirt sticks. If the earnings are good, shareholders can be very forgiving.

Bank of America chief executive Kenneth Lewis has spent more than $200 million over one and a half years for media ads touting the bank's "higher standards." But lately the Charlotte, N.C. bank has been caught up in a series of embarrassing acts that don't quite fit that spin: illegal trades, the stonewalling of regulators and lousy due diligence.

Now comes another black eye: Enrico Bondi, the man overseeing the restructuring of bankrupt milk giant Parmalat, says he will likely add BofA to a roster of financial firms (Citigroup, Credit Suisse, UBS, Deutsche Bank et al.) he is suing over Parmalat's collapse. BofA's alleged sin was to cover up Parmalat's crumbling finances while peddling the Italian company's bonds to unsuspecting investors.

The Bondi threat follows recent testimony by a onetime BofA worker in Milan that he accepted $27 million in kickbacks for helping to fob off some of those Parmalat bonds when the company was teetering on insolvency.

"The reputation that management built over the last few years is shot," says Richard Bove, an analyst at Hoefer & Arnett. The "higher standards" claim is "total bull."

BofA says it was a victim itself of Parmalat's fraud--it holds $124 million (face value) of Parmalat bonds--and denies it misled anyone. It says it will vigorously defend itself against any lawsuit.

The bad news for the bank started in October 2002. That's when BofA and 17 other banks were hit with a suit alleging they sold WorldCom bonds, now close to worthless, without the diligence that was due. BofA, rejecting an offer to settle for $447 million, is fighting the suit.

In September last year New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sued BofA for helping hedge fund Canary Capital illegally trade mutual fund shares. BofA's Lewis fired several staffers and paid $375 million to settle the charges, a quick response that won cheers from Wall Street.

Then in February a group of institutional investors, including HSBC, sued the bank, alleging that it allowed a hedge fund client to print out phony returns bearing the bank's name before it lost $571 million and was shut down. The bank denies any wrongdoing.

In March BofA paid $10 million to the Securities & Exchange Commission for not handing over e-mails promptly during an insider trading investigation and, most damning, not disclosing that some of the requested documents had been destroyed. In July BofA paid $69 million to settle a suit brought by Enron shareholders accusing it of off-balance-sheet maneuvers designed to hide debt. BofA says it paid to avoid the "distraction" of litigation and that it "broke no law."

And indeed the bank probably didn't break any laws in some of the cases bedeviling it, which it calls "isolated incidents." But it still has an image problem.

Consider BofA's role as a "new shareholder," as a Parmalat press release put it, in a struggling Parmalat subsidiary in Brazil, which sent shares of the parent up 17% in one day. In 1999 the bank set up two holding companies in the Cayman Islands to accept a $300 million loan from it and other lenders. The Cayman outfits then turned that money over to Parmalat's Brazilian unit in exchange for an 18% equity stake.

But there was a catch. If the Brazilian company didn't spin off to the public in four years, or if it did and the market valued that 18% stake at less than the $300 million put in, then the Cayman vehicles could exercise a "put option" bought from parent Parmalat in Italy. This would require the parent to buy the stake at the original cost, plus $125 million in interest.

In essence, outsiders, led by BofA, were simply lending Parmalat money to put into its Brazilian operations--though that debt never appeared on Parmalat's balance sheets. BofA says that the "put option" was disclosed in the Parmalat release announcing the deal and that it's not responsible for client releases, anyway.

Whatever the truth, it seems many investors were confused. A Morgan Stanley analyst issued a report stating that the investment was evidence that the Brazil unit was a "hidden jewel" in the milk company. The analyst urged investors to buy Parmalat stock.

BofA's Lewis is putting on a brave face. He has set up an internal investigations unit to smoke out wrongdoing with mutual fund clients, hired the deputy head of mutual fund oversight at the SEC to help keep regulators at bay and just added $300 million to litigation reserves. And he's running those ads.

The fact the bank's stock recently hit an alltime high of $44.51 is proof, says Chief Marketing Officer Catherine Bessant, that its now-ubiquitous tagline isn't just high-priced talk. "The market believes we have higher standards," she says.

Or maybe it just doesn't care, so long as the dividends keep coming. This year they will be $1.80, quadruple the payout of a decade ago. Hoefer & Arnett's Bove estimates earnings of $14 billion, or $3.65 a share, for 2004.

For all his concerns about reputation, Bove still rates BofA a "strong buy." Says he: "There is no divine justice on Wall Street."

--By the Numbers
8 Number of times "higher standards" appears in BofA annual report
8 Number of times "class action" appears
44% Increase in marketing spending*
27% Increase in stock price**
*Two years through 12/31/03.
**Two years through 8/27/04.

John:
Thanks for your suggestion. I do not have the original copy of the deposit slip when I first sent the deposit to the drive-through teller. But, I do have a BoA's copy of the deposit slip that was posted on my account later on the date of the deposit.

In the BoA's copy of the deposit slip, I do see the $80 cash deposit item, the $864.65 checks deposit item. At the bottom, the "Total Deposit" shows $944.65. The letter "Cash" letter was crossed out by BoA, indicating I did not deposit the $80 cash.

Do you think that is good enough to file a criminal complaint with the police?

Thanks.

Peter

Normally when a customer makes a 'mixed' deposit of cash and checks the deposit slip will state that and show the amounts deposited in cash and in checks separately. Was yours listed correctly on the receipt? If the cash portion is not shown you're pretty much out of luck. You should have caught it then. If it is shown you can proceed to the next step:

File a formal criminal complaint with the local police department.

It sounds drastic but it's really necessary to protect your interests. The police will conduct an investigation and will question everyone who would have been involved with the transaction all the way from the teller to the supervisor on duty. The police have access to information we do not such as previous criminal histories. Maybe the teller has had a similar complaint lodged against them in another state or city. They will find out. Let the system work for you.

Good luck.............