Posted on 07/07/2011 12:17:33 PM PDT by The Magical Mischief Tour
AUBURN, Wash. - Buying his own home was a big accomplishment for construction worker, Ikenna Njoku, of Auburn. He’s only 28 years old. “I was really excited. For the first time, I actually got to buy a lawn mower, mow my lawn and everything,” said Njoku.
Njoku qualified for the first time home buyer rebate on his tax return.
"It was really important, I had a vehicle I was looking on paying off," said. Njoku. And it wasn’t just any vehicle. “It was a 2001 Infinity I-30, silver…just like my favorite car, “he said.
Njoku signed up to have the rebate deposited directly into his Chase Bank account. But when the IRS rebate arrived, there was a problem. Chase had closed Njoku’s account because of overdrawn checks in the past. The bank deducted $600 to cover what he owed them and mailed him a cashier’s check for the difference--$8,463.21.
But when Njoku showed up at the Chase branch near his house intending to cash the check, he was in for a nasty surprise.
The check had Njoku’s name and address on it and was issued by JP Morgan Chase. But the Chase Customer Banker who handles large checks at the Auburn branch was immediately suspicious.
“I was embarrassed,” Njoku said. “She asked me what I did for a living. Asked me where I got the check from, looked me up and down—like ‘you just bought a house in Auburn, really?’ She didn’t believe that,” he said.
The Customer Banker said the check looked fake, so she took it, along with Njoku’s driver license and credit card, and called Bank Support.
After waiting for about 15 minutes, Njoku said he got impatient and told Chase he was leaving to do an important errand. By the time he got back, the bank was closed. Njoku said he called customer service and asked them what he should do. He says they told him to go back to the bank the next day to get his money.
But when Njoku arrived, it wasn’t the money that was waiting for him.
“They just threw me in jail; they called the police and said this guy has a fraudulent check,” Njoku said.
Auburn police arrested him for forgery - a felony crime.
“I was like - you’re making a mistake, you’re making a mistake, don’t take me to jail, I got work tomorrow. I can’t afford to miss work,” he said.
Njoku was taken to jail on June 24, 2010, which was a Thursday. The next day, Chase Special Investigations, realized it was a mistake. The check was legitimate. The Investigator called Auburn Police and left a message with the detective handling the case, but it was her day off. So Njoku stayed in jail for the entire weekend. Finally, on Monday, he was released.
Auburn Police Commander Dave Colglazier said Chase could have done a lot more to let them know they’d locked up an innocent man.
“We do have a main line that comes into our front office,” he said. “There are ways to reach someone 24/7 at a police department.”
For Njoku, going to jail for five days meant a lot more than just losing his freedom. He said the entire time he was “just stressed out…trying to figure out what was going on with my vehicle. I love my vehicle,” he said.
Njoku’s car had been towed from the bank parking lot and his check seized as evidence.
“I had to wait a couple of weeks,” he said, “and my car got sold, auctioned off."
Njoku says he didn’t have the money to pay the impound fees and fines to get his car back before it was sold. He said he also lost his job because he didn’t show up for work while he was in jail.
After all of that, Njoku said he never heard a word from Chase.
“They haven’t even sent me a letter or apologized,” he said. “It’s been a year we’ve been trying to contact these guys.”
Finally, A Seattle attorney offered to help. Last week, Felix Luna sent Chase a scathing letter. Read the attorneys' letter to Chase
“It’s one thing to make a mistake,” Luna said. “It’s one thing to make multiple errors of judgment like Chase has made and then, once you realize that your error has caused such harm to somebody else, to just ignore it for a year. I think he deserved better. I think all their customers do.”
Like Njoku, KING 5 had a difficult time getting answers from Chase. A week after first contacting them, they sent a two line e-mail.
"We received the letter and are reviewing the situation. We'll be reaching out to the customer," wrote Darcy Donoahoe-Wilmot, from Chase Media Relations.
Njoku said that even after he got out of jail, he said was confused and upset. "For a month, two months, I was just down and depressed," he said.
He’s still happy he bought his house, but sad that his experience with his own bank was so humiliating.
“They treated me like a criminal,” he said.
If you owe $8K then you now owe nothing. If you owe nothing, they give you $8K.
If you think about it, it does make sense if the concept of a tax credit is to exist at all (which is debatable). Imagine Person #1 sets up his W-4 to have too little deducted, and at the end of the year he owes $8K. But he has this tax credit, so he owes nothing, the government effectively gave him $8K to pay off his taxes due. Person #2 has his W-4 set up to even out to nothing owed or due at the end of the year. He gets this tax credit and -- what? Both have the same tax credit, but the guy who does his W-4 right gets nothing?
I thought it was a credit, not a refund - much the same as you get a ‘mileage credit’ to be used to work off of your Gross.
That's a deduction.
Sue the Hell out of Chase for making a false criminal report and everything that went along with it.
That’s easily provable fraud.
Forty bucks in a small claims filing will win you $4,000 + costs.
Something tells me there is a new car in this mans future.
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And a paid off house.
Thanks. Great link.
I have never been in a jail in my life, not even locked in for show during a high school field trip. I would play the “traumatized” card to the hilt, and I probably wouldn’t be lying either. I have no idea what it’s like to be locked up with criminals for almost a week, and I don’t want to know. I do know I’d make the company that did it to me pay dearly.
Okay, I read the letter. It’s a demand letter for the fraud of conversion. Their alleged cause of action is the delay involved between the time he presented the check for payment and the time it was actually released by the police. Their injury is that he lost his car because he had no money to pay the impound fees, and he lost his job because he didn’t have a car to drive. Neither would have happened if they’d cashed his check.
Note that nowhere in the letter is there a claim of personal injury, which leads me to speculate that the arrest wasn’t for forgery. What frequently happens in similar situations is that the police are called, they run a records check on the individual involved who turns out to have a warrant of some sort, (unpaid tickets, whatever) and he’s taken into custody for that. I’m not saying that’s what happened here, but I’m offering it as one reason why he’d seek compensation for the money and property lost, but not for the personal injury suffered as the result of their negligence/incompetence.
There’s more to be known here.
Is that legal. I have seen banks do the same thing.
Time to file a lawsuit. My Lawyer dreams about this situation. It would be a gold mine. And so it should.
Oh I do. Its one of the only Constitutional ways that a person can petition the government for a redress of grievances.
And for that reason I am against tort reform.
The sheriff’s department said that Chase could have called anytime of day and the Sheriff would hace released the guy.
You are speculation about facts that aren’t supported by the article or letter. You would have fit in well with the Casey Anthony jury with that kind of reasoning.
There’s a clerk who needs to hear, “Your ass is fired.”
You have no rational explanation why they’d focus on the conversion issue and ignore the rather obvious tort case, so you’ve decided to go with cheap insults.
Okay.
Well, we’ll see what the full set of facts reveal, though I doubt you’ll be willing to acknowledge them.
The revevant facts are:
1. He had a legitimate check issued by Chase Bank.
2. A bank employee, call the police to have him arrested for presenting a fradulent check.
3. The check was real.
4. The guy spent a weekend in jail on a false charge.
5. The bank could have had him released at any time over the weekend after they realized the guy was innocent.
Everything else is clutter.
Chase would have a good race against Bank of America for the bottom of the toilet. But I’d still vote for Bank of America.
Not so sure this is the whole story. This guy was no longer a Chase account holder. He did not have an open account to deposit the check into. But he still expected the bank to hand him over $8000, even though he had a bad history with them, acted ‘shady’, and had no account. Even if he had a valid account, the bank would likely hold the check for a number of days before making the funds available, regardless of where the check originated from.
And can you be arrested in a bank lobby because someone at the bank ‘suspects’ fraud? It doesn’t sound right. Seems there would be some kind of investigation before an arrest is made.
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