Denver resident Megan Holt thought she was being financially smart when she opened a high-yield savings account with SoFi. She used the account strictly for savings — not transactions. But one day, her phone rang. It was SoFi, alerting her to suspicious activity.
At first, she assumed the bank would protect her savings. Instead, she learned that nearly $7,400 had vanished overnight.
“They [the scammers] had done 19 transactions between $100 and $900 — almost every day,” Holt told 9News. “They just took it.”
Her total loss was $7,363.
The transactions were all friend-to-friend transfers sent to a person she had never heard of. Holt immediately disputed the charges, expecting the bank to protect her. Instead, SoFi told her the transactions appeared legitimate.
SoFi launched an investigation, but according to Holt, the bank concluded that her account had not been hacked.
“They said it didn’t look like there was a struggle to get into the account,” Holt told reporters. Essentially, SoFi was claiming the transfers must have been authorized because there was no clear sign of hacking.
Dan Vedra, a consumer protection attorney in Denver, told 9News reporters that the federal Electronic Funds Transfer Act (EFTA) protects consumers in these types of situations.
“The law says that the consumer is not liable for unauthorized electronic funds transfers. The financial institution is liable for an unauthorized electronic funds transfer,” Vedra explained.
However, according to Vedra, banks are increasingly overwhelmed with fraud cases, which can allow cases like Holt’s to slip through the cracks.
“There’s so many of these unauthorized transactions going on each and every day that they don’t have the manpower to reasonably investigate every single dispute that comes through,” Vedra told 9News reporters.
Vedra reviewed Holt’s case and said she likely did have a case under EFTA since she didn’t authorize the transfers or give out her account login information. With that information in hand, 9News Consumer Investigator Steve Staeger reached out to SoFi to ask why they ruled Holt liable.
Read more: Home prices in America could fly through the roof in 2025 — here’s the big reason why and how to take full advantage (with as little as $10)
