Regions bank charges customers fees for being victims of fraud!

My wife while looking at our account online, noticed that there were several charges made to our account in pending status that neither her nor I made.

Our account had been compromised by an online defrauder.

We both went the following business day to our local branch office at Wiregrass in Wesley Chapel, Florida to close the account before these defrauders stole our money. While trying to close the account the customer service attendant, Frances, told us that we could not close the account due to the fact there were charges pending. We decided instead to remove all funds from the account so our money would be safe and reopen another account at the same bank with different account number. In our haste to close the account we made an error, not realizing that there was a bank card transaction of $35 that we did make. Frances made us aware that there was this debit and we immediately came back the following business day and deposited $35 back into the account to pay for the transaction. She said it wasn't a problem. It was only 24 hours.

This is where the problems begin... and multiply.

Since we removed all the funds and there were pending transactions that were fraudulent, the bank said that they would give us a credit for the transactions while investigating the related charges. As it turned out, the bank did indeed conclude that the charges were not made by us and they received their money back from the companies and/or individuals who placed the charges to our account in the first place.

Meanwhile as they (Regions bank) were doing their "investigation" they were the whole time charging us, the victims of the fraud, overdraft fees and compounding them , because they decided to pay the companies anyways, despite the fact that we told them from the beginning the charges were fraudulent.

Regions charged us $275 in fees for being victims of fraud! After hours and hours on the phone and going to the branch office, we were told they would "do us a favor" and charge us only half of the fees. We asked why the fees were so high and they told us first that they did not not recoup all the money from the fraud and we were repaying the credit they gave us. Only after making them explain every single charge did they determine that the charges were not from the credit they gave but were fees the bank was charging us for giving us the credit! We thought this was ridiculous!!! We didn't make the charges in the first place, we tried to close the account before the charges went through and weren't told that any fees would be on our account because of the credit they gave us! Why should we have to pay anything since none of this was ever our fault? We called again and again trying to talk to someone who had authority and that's when we were told they made a corporate decision to charge us the fees and that could not and would not be reversed.

We asked for the person that makes that decision and were told they could not be reached and hung up on us.

Then came the endless phone calls.

The phone calls telling us that our account was overdrawn and that there was $275.00 owed to the bank. While on the phone we tried to tell them what happened...the fraud, the investigation, the incorrect overdraft fees... they did not care. In fact they said we had 5 days to pay up or they were basically going to "blacklist" us so that we could not open another account with any other banks. They said they would attach a note to our account that tells all other banks not to bank with us because we do not pay our bank fees.

How absurd! Since when does a bank act like the Mafia? When it comes down to it, I guess Regions and it's corporate office are in the extortion business as well as banking. My two cents, never...ever... bank with Regions Bank.