Aug. 13 (UPI) -- New York Attorney General Letitia James filed suit Wednesday against the parent company of Zelle, a bank transfer app, for "failing to protect its users from massive amounts of fraud," a press release said.
An investigation by the Office of the Attorney General revealed that parent company Early Warning Services designed Zelle without critical safety features, allowing scammers to target users and steal more than $1 billion between 2017 and 2023, the release said.
"No one should be left to fend for themselves after falling victim to a scam," James said in the statement. "I look forward to getting justice for the New Yorkers who suffered because of Zelle's security failures."
EWS knew from the beginning that key features of the Zelle network made it uniquely susceptible to fraud, and yet it failed to adopt basic safeguards to address these glaring flaws or enforce any meaningful anti-fraud rules on its partner banks, the press release alleged.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed a similar suit in December 2024, but it was dropped after the President Donald Trump administration took power.
