Bank refuses to close fraudulent business account opened with my EIN
Banks often refuse to close or investigate fraudulent business accounts if only the EIN was used rather than the owner's personal Social Security Number. This leaves business owners exposed to severe liability and unable to stop ongoing activity on accounts they never opened.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- This comes up 28.2× more often in r/smallbusiness than across the site as a whole.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1filing a police report
- 2sending a letter to the bank's legal department
- 3reporting the bank to the state banking regulator
- 4reporting business identity theft to the IRS via CPA paperwork
- 5paying the balance out of pocket to avoid credit damage
- 6making at least the minimum monthly payment
- 7trying to work out repayment with the family member
- 8informing the lender about the fraud
- 9looking into legal guidance
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“my mom surprised me with a credit card.”source ↗
“i noticed that my balance was damn near maxed out and i only had 17 cents of credit left”source ↗
“Well, the payment was due September 1, and she missed it.”source ↗
“I genuinely do not know what to do in this situation. I am very distressed and betrayed by my mother.”source ↗
“I can’t close the account with a balance like that.. what do i do guys?”source ↗
“So a few weeks ago I received a letter addressed to my business with a very odd second name on it indicating "Person X" now had online access to my Wells Fargo Business Checking. The only problem is I don't bank with Wells Fargo.”source ↗
“Today I get told: * The account was not flagged for fraud or frozen * They did open an identity theft case, but since my name and social security number were not used, it has been closed * They would not close the fraudulent account or take any other actions”source ↗
“I am obviously unhappy about this since I really feel it carries a huge liability for my business.”source ↗
“A credit account appears to have been opened using my company’s EIN, and it has been negatively reporting on my business credit for over four months.”source ↗
“Yes, we applied for a loan during Covid only to find out that “we” already got a loan. Some fraudsters used our company and got an EIDL loan using our name.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 2Family opened credit cards in my name when I was a minor
- 2What to do after your bank account is hacked
- 18How to stop fraudulent chargebacks on online stores
- 2How to prove business partners are stealing money without tipping them off
- 2How to open a business bank account for a home-based business
- 3How to tell if a BEC attack was caught automatically or by a human