IndyMac Bank Customer Frustrated by $52K Loss

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Eight days before Christmas, David Cohn happened by my blog, Bob McCarty Writes, and read a post I had written about the July 11 failure of IndyMac Bank.  Afterward, he left a comment that came across to me as either a warning to his fellow Americans or the words of a kook.  After deleting the comment because he had included his home phone number in it, I was intrigued enough to send Cohn an e-mail Dec. 17 at 2:02 p.m.  In it, I asked him one question:

So what do you want to share with me about your IndyMac experience?

In his reply, Cohn shared a copy of a letter he had sent two days earlier to FDIC Chair Sheila C. Bair.  In addition, he detailed his so-far-unsuccessful efforts to obtain help from his congressman, Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.), and from his two U.S. senators, Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and Mel Martinez (R-Fla.).

After moving him out of the “kook” category, I told him I would take a look and see what I could do, adding, “No promises, but I’ll try my best to help.”  Thus began a three-day exchange of e-mails and phone calls during which I learned the details of his four-month-long battle against to have his insured deposits returned to him by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a regulatory agency Congress created in 1933 to “restore public confidence in the nation’s banking system.”

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A 44-year-old business owner and real estate investor in Port Charlotte, Fla., Cohn had $305,798.17 — $300,000 of which he believed was insured by the FDIC — on deposit with the Pasadena, Calif.-based IndyMac Bank.  Twenty days after the July 11 failure of the bank, the FDIC debited a total of $105,798.17 from his accounts without his consent and without prior warning.  Cohn found himself in a state of disbelief.

To read the rest of this lengthy article, click here.

-- Bob McCarty Writes