Fifth Third Bank Class Action Suit Filed By Lake Forest Woman

CHICAGO — A Lake Forest resident last month filed a class action lawsuit against Fifth Third Bank, accusing the bank of using her and other customers' identities to create fraudulent accounts. The bank already faces two federal suits filed in Illinois involving allegations of unauthorized accounts — one by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in March and another by a stockholder in April.

The latest suit was filed in Cook County Circuit Court by Joanne Zanni, a customer at the 990 S. Waukegan Road Fifth Third Bank branch. Her complaint follows the Cincinnati-based bank's disclosure in January that "a small number of former employees may have misused certain customers' sensitive information going back to June 2018." The leaked identity data included names, addresses, account numbers, social security numbers, mother's maiden names and more, affected customers were told. The bank has not specified how many employees or customers were involved.

Within six weeks, attorneys for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, had filed an eight-count suit against the bank. According to federal regulators, Fifth Third imposed employee sales goals and a compensation program to reward employees for selling new products and services to customers, with sales goals "often set at a level higher than the anticipated sales" and used to rate workers. The suit alleges bank officials knew by 2010 that employees were opening accounts using the identities of customers without their knowledge or consent in order to achieve the sales goals or receive rewards, and the company failed to take steps to stop them.

"In short, Fifth Third focused on its own financial interests to the detriment of customers," according to the March 9 complaint.

The bank's chief legal officer rejected the allegations in the agency's civil suit, describing it as "unnecessary and unwarranted" in a March 9 statement. Susan Zaunbrecher said the bank does not reward employees for opening unauthorized accounts, does not give employees sales quotas or "product-specific targets" and claws back compensation from employees if accounts are unused or quickly closed.

"After an investigation spanning more than three years and involving nearly half a billion pieces of data produced by the Bank, the CFPB has not informed us of any unauthorized accounts beyond the fewer than 1,100 accounts that the Bank itself identified out of 10 million," Zaunbrecher said. "These accounts involved less than $30,000 in improper customer charges that were ultimately waived or reimbursed to customers years ago. While even a single unauthorized account is one too many, we took appropriate and decisive action to address each situation."

No information on the number of employees or customers involved was available from a Fifth Third spokesperson Wednesday morning.

The CFPB complaint was followed by a federal class action suit filed April 7 in Chicago on behalf of Lee Christakis, identified as a shareholder in the company. His complaint alleges Fifth Third officials violated securities regulations by scheming to conceal or misrepresent facts from investors.

Zanni filed suit on April 29 in state court asking a Cook County judge to allow Fifth Third customers to sue jointly as a class and citing six causes of action against it, including violation of the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Electronic Funds Transfer Act. It also alleged unjust enrichment, conversion and requested that a judge declare the bank liable for its "practice of opening unlawful accounts."

The complaint claims that Fifth Third uses a "cross-sell strategy" to increase the number of products and services it sells. It says the bank would sometimes make employment conditional on meeting ambitious sales goals and rewarded managers and their subordinates for selling new products to existing bank customers.

"We look forward to litigating the claims alleged in the Complaint on behalf of our client and on behalf of other persons damaged by the Bank's conduct," Doug Werman, Zanni's lead attorney, told Patch in an email.

Zanni first opened an account with the bank in 2009. At some point after 2012, the company began opening additional accounts in her name without her knowledge, which she confirmed after checking her account history, according to the suit. Zanni believes the bank charged her fees for the unauthorized accounts and may still be charging fees to other account holders.

As a result of the unauthorized accounts, the complaint says Zanni believes her credit score had been harmed and the scheme put her at risk of being unable to meet financial obligations.

"Had Zanni been informed of Fifth Third's deceptive and unfair practices, she would have opted for a different bank's products and services," it said.

Zanni's suit alleges the company's sales policies led employees to improperly open accounts, transfer funds into them, open authorized lines of credit and enroll customers in online-banking services they had never requested. An initial status conference in the case is scheduled for June 25.

Earlier this month, Mitchell Feiger, chairman and CEO of Fifth Third Bank, announced he was retiring on May 29. Feiger said he was looking forward to having "greater time available both for community service and my family." He had held the position since the March 2019 merger of Fifth Third and MB Financial, where he was formerly president and CEO.