Stories from Around the Web on “the Black Bank” PNC

Evans Liberal Politics, June 16, 2010, photo from Wikipedia, by Paul Evans.

The Evans family (my mother and father and me) are former customers of The Wayne County National Bank, a fine institution we never had any trouble with. Then, several years ago, WCNB got bought up by National City. There was a lot of grumbling locally, since WCNB was a locally owned community resource and we all hated to deal with a monolithic, big bank… Some customers moved their money… My mother was at that time dying (although we didn’t know she would pass when she did), my father was elderly, and I had the decision making role in the family. I decided to “go with the flow” and stick with National City. And I want to say, I was never sorry I did. National City customer service was polite, and I never had any discrepancies on my accounts or those of my father and mother, who had a joint account.

National City had a badly run mortgage division which ended up badly in debt. At the time of the takeover by PNC, and according to the New York Times (October 24, 2008), PNC inherited “nearly $20 billion of losses on bad mortgages and other troubled loans” from National City. What happened, as I remember it, was that National City was in real trouble with these debts and a candidate for bankruptcy, when the TARP money was released. Nobody helped National City, I guess they were considered the poor man on the block, or basically hopeless. PNC, on the other hand, received approval for a $7.7 billion government investment as part of the Treasury Department’s capital injection program. (NY Times).

PNC took that TARP money and bought up National City with it… but National City’s debts didn’t just disappear. I would speculate that there is one heck of a lot of pressure on PNC to make good the debts they inherited from National City. And they immediately laid off 4,000 National City workers.

All I know is that for some reason, known for certain only to God and perhaps Satan, PNC has decided to rip this poor sucker (me, Paul Evans) off big time. I think they took me for around $3,000. I’m through with this bank — I’m switching all my funds, and my father’s funds, if I can arrange it, to another bank and letting PNC go to their own private little banker’s club, in their BMW’s with other people’s money paying for it. They hurt me real bad.

I live in my father’s home, which is paid off — no mortgage. Dad is in the local West View Manor nursing home; the poor fella is a wonderful kind Yale Ph.D. who always took care of me over the years, which was because of the severity of my mental illness. So anyway, the Wayne County Department of Job and Family Services got involved via the local Hospice, and now a judge has ruled that Dad has to have a lawyer as a guardian, since apparently I as someone on disability for mental illness am not considered by the court to be responsible enough. (I can tell you how I feel about THAT!)

The long and the short of it is that I have two friends staying with me in my father’s house. These people, friends of mine, are staying here with my father’s full knowledge and consent. Dad has short term memory issues, and despite his obvious intelligence, since his memory is faulty, the court has ruled him incompetent and I am officially pretty much out of the picture in decisions about Dad. I don’t think he’s ever coming home, now, even though his physician officially judged him OK to come home at the beginning of April. Some Wayne County judge, and the Wayne County Department of Job and Family Services, Adult Protective Services division, won’t allow Dad home now, even on visits.

One thing is for sure. From the beginning of the time PNC officially took over the local National City, I began to have discrepancies in my checking account balances. Money just disappeared from my checking account. Now, I am poor. I make $387 SSA and $307 SSI from my disability, the minimum amount. I couldn’t afford “discrepancies.” PNC security suggested maybe my friends, who are unemployed (we are looking), were improperly accessing my funds. I believed PNC some of the time (in this ongoing nightmare) and this caused bad feelings at home, to say the least. Twice I ended up getting the Wayne County Sheriff to remove my friends…. and twice the Christian love in my heart caused me to re-evalute and let them back in. They had nowhere else to go but a homeless shelter and my friends and I really did care about each other… it was just these money discrepancies came between us.

Let’s talk about my National City credit card. This was the “Everyday Rewards” card. It had a limit of $400 or $500 and I have been in some financial difficulty and so I was about at the max. Then PNC takes over and, mysteriously, my credit limit is at first $3,000 and then $4,000. OK, I had to avail myself of that source of funds and soon my credit card debt was at $1,600. It was at about this time (April, 2010) that some real big discrepancies were appearing in my checking account. I actually thought my two friends were ripping me off.

So I went to bed one day with a credit card debt of $1,600, and within a day or so it was at $3,100. I did spend some money, but nothing like $1,500. I was being driven to distraction. Charges were also appearing in my checking account I had no explanation for. So my credit debt was at $3,100 one day and at bedtime that night it was maxed out at over $4,100. Only thing is, I swear on the Bible that neither me nor either of my friends made any purchase after the credit cared was at $3,100 with it… BANG, you’re $1,000 deeper in debt.

I went to the Wooster Buehler’s PNC branch this morning. I expected my account to be right near zero, but knew that my Dad had a little in his account, so I went after some cigarette money. Well they had me with a negative checking account balance of $982.09. Damn, was I blown away… They would not allow me to withdraw from my Dad’s account, on which I have power of attorney papers filed, either. Claimed that my debt meant that I couldn’t touch Dad’s funds. What law says that? They are two different accounts by two different account holders.

Well I finally stumbled back to my car and sat there and smoked my last cigarette, looking over the four page printout PNC had given me, and BOY are there some problems with this accounting. It says that on May 12th I was $435.06 overdrawn, and then on June first I had my automatic deposit of $307.00 SSI, and there was a withdrawal of $25.92, and somehow they put those numbers together and came up with a negative balance of $281.08. I’m sorry, that doesn’t add up…and there were no other transactions in between, it’s a sequential printout. The figure should have been $153.98 in the hole, not $281.08. Now, do you expect me to believe PNC can’t add??? On June 9th, my two friends tried to use my debit card: they tried four times and each of the four times, they were unsuccessful. But, for each of those four times I was charged a $2.00 user fee AND a $36.00 overdraft fee. Worse, on June 11, 2010 I got some money – $200 – and took it to deposit in my PNC checking account to bring my balance into the positive. I deposited $190 and took $10 in cash. I remember clearly that this put the account into a positive balance of + $13.52. I know this was that day, because for that day they show a debit at the Burbank Duke and Duchess for $22.58. I remember that day and I remember that one debit. Moreover, if I was $823 in the hole on June 1st, why the hell were they letting my card debit the account??? But PNC’s printout shows me with a negative balance of -$823.52. You can imagine how floored I was when I saw this. I KNEW I had a positive balance that morning, I remember that day clearly. Moreover PNC has no record of the deposit. We did NOT spend any other money that day…. How in the HELL do they come up with minus $823.52???

The whole thing stinks like badly rotten fish. I wouldn’t let my worst enemy use PNC after what I’ve been through. Here are some links – resources for those looking for evidence of the stink of this – to me – fraudulent institution. If they are not purposefully fraudulent, then their computers have security holes in big enough to drive a truck through. The upshot is that I am financially ruined. People, if you are a former National City customer and are still with PNC, my advice is to move your money while you still have some. I encourage all those with similar stories to leave their own horror stories in a comment, below. I’ll include the good ones in this story. Apparently I am by no means the only one this has happened to. I don’t know many people, so after I got this body blow I was sitting there with my head spinning and all I could think of was to go see my Dad over at the nursing home. I had concluded that somehow PNC was systematically ripping me off, and I knew then that it was not my friends’ fault. I told Dad all about this and then went home and told my friends and we are feeling a lot better about each other now. While I was at the nursing home, I talked to the charge nurse on the ward and she said the very same thing had happend to her husband. But I figure there are, overall, perhaps $3,000 in discrepancies over the last three months with my PNC accounts. Links:

See Congressman Wants PNC-Nat. City Deal Investigated, Reader comments, U.S. News and World Report, an old article from the end of 2008. It was a really stinky deal. National City gets squat out of the TARP distribution, PNC gets $7.7 billion and proceeds to use this money to take over National City. And all the finacial world shuckin’ and jiving and smiling away. And there was not justice in it for National City investors, either. In the aforementioned reader comments, one investor complains, asking “how can they takeover a bank with the value of $8.00 per share with the price of $2.23 per share?” The whole thing stunk to high heaven.

Here’s something pretty significant that could account for the kind of pressure on a bank that could cause it to act fraudulently: PNC Mortgage Acceptance Corp. 1999-CM1 Class B-8 Rating Lowered To ‘D’ Following Principal Losses, Standard and Poor’s, June 15, 2010. Damn, PNC’s own mortgage division is tanking!

Former National City Bank Customers: Get Out While You Can!!!

PNC: Stolen Funds Returning To Customers’ Accounts, News 5, WLWT.com, March 17, 2010, except quoted verbatim:

CINCINNATI — PNC Bank says it will help customers who had fraudulent charges from their accounts during the National City Bank changeover.

Some customers have reported thousands of dollars disappearing from their accounts without their knowledge, and the bank has decided to monitor all accounts for potential threats.

PNC spokesman Fred Solomon said the incident involved former National City Bank customers’ debit cards in the Cincinnati area, and additional security has been placed on those accounts.

One customer said she lost nearly $3,000 from her account in a matter of hours and another woman lost $4,500.

A PNC Bank customer who asked to be called “Susan” for the purpose of this story said she got a rude awakening when she tried to withdraw some cash from her account.

“I got a notification on the screen that I had insufficient funds,” Susan said.

When she later checked her account online, what she thought was a small mistake turned into big mystery.

“I realized there was almost $4,500 gone from account from places in the United Kingdom, Great Britain and Hong Kong,” Susan said.

Susan said that like many people, she used to be a National City Bank customer until the recent switch.

I’m not the only one this is happening to. After I got the horrible news this morning about my checking account balance, I was over visiting my father in the nursing home. I happened to tell my sad story to the charge nurse on Dad’s ward, and she said the very same thing happened to her husband, using the Shreve, Ohio branch. I talked to one person today outside of bank officials, my Dad and my two friends here: what are the chances that one solitary person would also have experienced this bank fraud?? There is just too damned much wrong with all of the accounting on my PNC accounts. For me, perhaps $3,000 in charges that couldn’t be there. And the OVERDRAFT FEES!!! This is June 16th. Since June 10th, there have been FIFTEEN, $36.00 overdraft fees along with a now ongoing $7.00 a day charge as a continuous overdraft charge. And the whole thing is all wrong since on the 11th of June, they have me with a negative balance to start the day of – $823.52, when I’ll swear on the Bible, the Constitution and anything else, that, by God, on that morning I deposited $190 into the account (which they show no record of) and that brought it into a positive balance. ((Believe me, I’m looking for the receipts.)) Here are some more news links on PNC:

PNC Bank: National City Bank debit accounts hacked, hit with fraud, Simple Thoughts, March 18, 2010, by Ieva M. Augstums, AP, excerpt quoted verbatim:

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — PNC Financial Services Group Inc. said Thursday it is investigating a breach of accounts affecting former National City Bank customers and their debit-card accounts.

The affected accounts are restricted to the Cincinnati area, and current PNC Bank customers are not affected, PNC Financial spokesman Fred Solomon told The Associated Press.

Bank officials were made aware of the data breach earlier this week, but Solomon would not say how many customers’ accounts have been compromised or how much money was stolen.

PNC/National City cards hit with fraud in Cincinnati area, NewNet5.com, March 18, 2010, by John Matarese.

A Must Read: Some Perspective on PNC, Fraud, and the Bailout, The Provocateur, November 22, 2008, by Mike Volpe.

Something I’m strongly thinking about: Jersey City man sues PNC Bank over overdraft fee policy, The Associated Press on NJ.com, October 10, 2009, by AP, excerpt quoted verbatim:

TRENTON, N.J. — Virgilio S. Casayuran Jr. of Jersey City is suing PNC Bank, accusing it of violating the state’s consumer fraud act by using abusive overdraft policies.

The suit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court, claims PNC unfairly manipulates the order in which it subtracts charges from customers’ accounts in order to maximize overdraft fees.

The lawsuit alleges that instead of posting transactions chronologically as they occur, PNC deducts them in a highest to lowest dollar amount in order to trigger overdraft fees.

Well they’re certainly screwing the hell out of ME with their overdraft fees, as I have related.

Have Your Own PNC Horror Story?? Leave a comment below. Any links you have would be appreciated as well. ~ Paul Evans

UPDATE: In related news, see
Former mortgage lender accused of fraud, L.A. Times, June 17, 2010, by Jim Puzzanghera and E. Scott Reckard, excerpt quoted verbatim:

A 16-count federal indictment charges the ex-chairman of a Florida mortgage firm in connection with an alleged $1.9-billion scheme that helped topple a major bank and then sought a chunk of the government’s bailout fund.

*****

Monty Python: The Merchant Banker

In these Troubled Times
of Wall Street Bailouts, let’s examine why in the world
we might be a bit leery of these Guys:

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