One man is suing Bank of America after the company allegedly handed over his account to another customer with the same name.
Konstantinos Alexopoulos opened up an account at Barnett Bank -- which was ultimately acquired by BofA -- in 1992 when he came to the United States for college, the Tampa Tribune reports. He returned to Greece in 1997 and continued making deposits to the account totaling $59,000 in 2003, but when he checked his balance in 2005, it had dwindled to $1,400.
Alexopoulos alleges that's because the bank mixed up his account with that of another man of the same name, who subsequently withdrew the money, according to the Tribune.
If Alexopoulos' claims hold up in court, it would be far from the first BofA mix-up. The bank also gave the same 10-digit account number to two customers in Riverside, California, according to a July report by the Los Angeles Times. One of the customers -- an 88-year-old World War II veteran -- ended up losing out on $30,000 worth of social security payments as a result. After an investigation by the San Bernardino County district attorney's office, he ultimately got the money back.
In September it was reported that a Hawaiian woman sued BofA after she received computer-generated calls as often as every 15 minutes from the bank over a missed mortgage payment, while she was grieving for her recently deceased husband.
BofA has also had some notable blunders issuing foreclosures. The bank threatened to foreclose on a Utah couple's home earlier this month, after they had already sold it. The bank also tried to foreclose on a home last month that was destroyed by Hurricane Ike in 2008. In addition, the bank asked a Massachusetts man in August to pay a $0.00 balance to stave off foreclosure.
The account and foreclosure mixups likely aren't the worst public relations disaster for BofA in recent months. The bank backtracked from a plan to start charging customers $5 to use their debit cards after consumers and lawmakers blasted the proposal.
Still, BofA isn't the only big bank to make a big mistake. JPMorgan Chase had a man jailed for four days last summer for trying to deposit a check the bank itself had issued him.