Free Republic

A woman has told how she lost her life savings after she fell for a sophisticated text scam. When Suni Wan received a message from her bank HSBC saying that there was some fraudulent activity on her account she called them straight back. The text did not seem unusual as it appeared in the same thread that her bank usually messaged her in. The message told her that a new device had logged onto her account and if it wasn’t her to call back immediately. The man on the other end of the phone said that an S8 had logged...

My wife and I have an account with one of the large mutual fund companies. We were just informed that the state is getting ready to seize the account because it is considered abandoned. We have had the fund for about 12 years with the dividends and capital gains automatically deposited in our bank account. After calling the fund we were told that even though there have been approximately 150 automatic transactions on the account over the last 12 years they did not count as activity and so the state is preparing to seize the account. We were told we...

Two years ago, I wrote a column that frightened a lot of people. Now, I’m going to scare you again — this time, maybe even more. That column, which appeared on Sept. 24, 2015, explained that it had become easier for states to confiscate people’s bank, money market and other financial accounts because they were “abandoned.” So-called escheatment laws have been on the books forever. But states have been changing the rules so that it has become simpler for them to consider an account dormant — and then take it over. It’s a great scam for states that are desperate...

Officials at ShoreBank, the troubled community bank with ties to the Obama administration, say there’s a “50-50” chance that recent efforts to rescue the institution will fail, and the bank will be taken over by federal government, FOX Business has learned. “It’s a coin flip, 50-50,” ShoreBank spokesman Brian Berg said, assessing the bank’s potential for surviving. “We’re working on” raising the money. Berg says the bank believes that it needs to raise $75 million more in additional capital to avoid being taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. as early as this Friday. An FDIC spokesman declined to...