Wells Fargo Customer Lost $4,400 Just Hours After Depositing A Check
Wells Fargo Customer Lost $4,400 Just Hours After Depositing A Check — and a legal loophole nearly left her in the lurch
Mike Crisolago Mon, October 20, 2025
A Houston woman paid a steep price, literally, for a simple bank deposit that she made at her local Wells Fargo branch.
Willie Delane told her local Fox 26 network that on September 15 she deposited a life insurance check totalling $10,000 into her Wells Fargo bank account.
“I've been with Wells Fargo for so long, years and years” she said in the story. This is why, when she received a text roughly nine hours later saying that there was something fishy with a transaction involving her account, she called customer service. (1)
According to Delane, the Wells Fargo rep said that they would freeze her account and cancel her bank card, with a replacement to be issued by mail.
The next morning, however, Delane discovered that her account was $4,400 short — the money was transferred from her savings account to her checking account, and then withdrawn.
She says she didn’t make the “teletransfer” but Wells Fargo claims she did, and at first refused to refund the money. But all's well that ends well — after the news report aired, Delane says she checked her account and Wells Fargo returned the missing funds to her account. (2)
How could a simple text message result in a $4,400 fraud? And how can you prevent it from happening to you?
The Legal Loophole That Could Cost You Thousands
The CalCoast Times reports that, when contacting Wells Fargo about the text message she received, Delane called the customer service number listed in the message. (3) This could be a sticking point in the fraud case due to a law called Regulation E within the Electronic Fund Transfer Act (EFTA).
According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), (4) Regulation E essentially protects Americans who fall victim to suspected fraud via an electronic transfer of funds from their financial institution. They add that if a case that falls under Regulation E is reported to a financial institution in a timely manner, then the institution must “promptly investigate” and “correct the error within one business day after determining that an error has occurred.”
That said, Consumer Reports (CR) points out that if a customer is “tricked and ends up authorizing money to be sent to scammers,” the banks are often no longer liable for reimbursing them. (5)
And not only that, but National Consumer Law Center senior attorney Carla Sanchez-Adams told CR that “Financial institutions across the board are not reimbursing consumers” in such situations but, rather, “fight(ing) tooth-and-nail to hold the consumer liable.”
CR adds that Wells Fargo faced multiple class-action lawsuits in recent years from victims of fraudulent wire transfers, while customers at other banks are falling prey as well.
The bank, for the record, says it’s investigating this most recent matter, though the Fox 26 story notes that Wells Fargo had previously claimed that Delane “made the transactions and the money will not be returned.”
How to fight back against financial fraud
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported $12.5 billion in consumer fraud losses last year, a number, they said, that’s up 25% from 2023. (6) The fraud ranges from investment to imposter scams, with text messages proving the third most popular means of contact for the con after email and phone calls.
TO READ MORE: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wells-fargo-customer-loses-4k-220000160.html