Chase Closed My 25-Year Account

Sit back, relax, and listen to my tale of woe.

This is a story of how JP Morgan Chase bank (Chase) done me dirty. And apparently I’m not the only one.

It’s an interesting story that I thought I’d never tell, but I’m sharing so that ESI Money readers as well as those who end up here from other sources might be warned and learn from my experience.

It starts with me minding my own business, going along with life as I had been for years, when Chase tossed a grenade my way.

Here’s what happened…

A Random Email

On Tuesday, June 17, 2025 I received the following email from Chase:

Financial institutions have an obligation to know our customers and monitor account activity. After careful review, we made a decision to close your account(s). We sent you the information in a letter through U.S. Mail. It should arrive within the next few days.

If you need to talk to someone after receiving the letter, please call us at 1-877-382-8854; we accept operator relay calls.

There was some more boilerplate wording but this is the heart of the message.

To be honest, I thought this was a phishing scam, but just in case it wasn’t, we waited to see if a letter would arrive.

The Letter

On Friday, June 20, sure enough, we received two letters (one addressed to each of us). It said Chase was canceling four credit cards (only two of which I know of, we use one barely and don’t use the other) and our main checking account (which we use quite a bit and is at the center of much of our finances).

The cancellation was effective on July 10.

I didn’t care about the cards but did the checking account, so I tried calling that night only to be told (via recording) that the wait was more than 30 minutes. No thanks.

Seeking Guidance

I had no idea what was going on, so I went to the Millionaire Money Mentors (MMM) forums for insight and suggestions.

FWIW, this is one of the major advantages to the forums — I have at my disposal a group of intelligent, experienced, and ready-to-help friends that can be asked for their thoughts in all sorts of situations.

People ask for help with jobs, kids, investing, retirement, purchases (large and small), and on and on. So it was quite natural for me to head there and seek counsel.

Here’s what I posted there:

I got an email a few days ago that said Chase was canceling some or all of my accounts and that I’d get some communication in the mail soon.

Today I got the mail notices and they are closing one credit card I haven’t used in forever (no surprise), one credit card we just use a bit (it’s technically a business card I had when we had rental units), and my main checking account.

The last one is the killer as I have a gazillion payments coming into and out of that account. I have had it for 25 years as well.

I will be calling them to see what the heck is going on, but my guess is once Chase makes a decision then that’s that, so just asking here for any insights you may have as well as any tips for what to do.

Then I added this:

The one thing that could look strange was earlier this year (January and February) we transferred a lot of money to my daughter to help buy her house. It was in chunks of $5k and $10k because Chase had daily limits for us.

So maybe $200k of small payments looks strange? It probably does but that was 4 months ago.

Here’s the first reply I received:

Yeah $200K of transactions in a short time frame all staying under the 10K reporting limit, that could look like money laundering. Seems like they saw something they didn’t like. Those transfers would be my guess.

Another said the same thing:

Structuring is a money laundering technique where large sums of money are broken down into smaller transactions to avoid reporting requirements and detection by financial institutions or law enforcement. This practice is illegal under anti-money laundering laws.

My suggestion is get on the phone and ask why. If it’s those transactions I would say that you had no intent to avoid reporting but that their system limited the daily transaction amount. As a young person your daughter was more comfortable with Zelle than receiving a wire.

Something like that, sadly it’s unlikely they will change their minds once risk management has been flagged.

Others noted that what I did might have looked like structuring but wasn’t actually structuring:

You did not actually commit the criminal offense of structuring. The idea of the “crime” is that you supposedly know about bank transaction reports for $10k+ transactions, and you thus tried to avoid them all by only doing smaller amounts. All of which, by the way, would be entirely legal and uninteresting were the law not trying to be draconian about money laundering.

Instead, here, you simply were stuck beneath the daily transaction limit – just like at my own bank – and had to operate beneath it to avoid the hassle of driving into a branch somewhere.)

This is one of those very controversial laws due to how it can obviously sweep innocent people into its reach (and into these compliance sweeps) very easily.

On the upside, banks sometimes seize all funds when this happens, and they haven’t (yet) done that to you. See this, for example, for people whom that has happened to. Then you have to sue the bank/feds at your own expense to get your own money back.

Another chimed in:

What you did was not structuring, it was instead ambiguous and Chase defined suspicious activity (three addresses in five years + multiple small transfers to a single person).

You did multiple transfers on a smaller amount to your daughter because it was the path of least resistance. Chase would have required you to come in branch and pay $60+ for a wire transfer vs. punching a few buttons on the app they designed.

All this talk about “structuring” (something I had never heard of until now) made me wonder what I had actually done. Let’s call a timeout here for a second and go back through what actually happened.

My Transactions with Chase

We had decided to allow our daughter and son-in-law to take $200k out of her inheritance to help them buy a home in (very pricey) North Carolina.

In 2024, we sent them the maximum amounts we could without going over the IRS’s gift tax exclusion. This was $18k per person per gift so it meant a total of $72k. The rest was sent in January 2025. It was sent to them via Zelle, from our Chase account to their Chase account.

As I remember, Chase had daily limits I could send via Zelle, so I had to stay within those. I also was managing cash flow in and out from my websites, investments, loan repayments (I borrowed money from my dad to pay cash for our house, paid him 5% on it for a year, then repaid it all), and personal expenses (which were large as we were furnishing and upgrading a new (to us) house).

So I sent what I could when I could based on the limits Chase gave me and my own personal constraints. Overall, I made 17 transfers over the three months of November 2024 through January 2025. They totaled $200,000. The highest transfer was $15,000 and the lowest was $2,000.

I had five transfer under $10k and two others were $10k exactly, but maybe these seven were enough to look suspicious. BTW, I knew nothing about these rules. I have had pretty simple banking requirements most of my life (no mortgage since the late 90’s) so transferring large amounts rarely comes up.

At the time, I didn’t think anything about it because:

• I knew I wasn’t doing anything wrong
• It’s my money – I can move it around as I want, right?
• I was constrained by Chase itself – if they had let me do one big transaction, I would have
• The money is going from one Chase account to another so it should be smooth, correct?

That said, now that I look at the numbers above and know about structuring from the MMM comments, it does look sort of fishy.

But if it did, why not contact me (at the end of January at the latest) instead of waiting for several months?

And when they did contact me, why not a phone call or a message asking for an explanation? Don’t I deserve at least that much after having this account for 25 years?

Apparently not as none of that happened. And in fact, the “customer service” (which I can barely type without laughing, which is why I put it in quotes) would get worse over time.

More from MMM

As the comments and suggestions rolled in from MMM members, some asked why I didn’t write a check (I never thought of it – I hardly use checks these days. Besides, wouldn’t a huge check be an issue anyway?) or wire the money (they have fees and are always so nerve-wracking.)

Anyway, I will do one of those next time if this ever comes up. I thought I was ok because I was playing under Chase’s rules (transferring what they allowed me).

There were several financial/bankers in the forums (which is another great thing about MMM — the members have experience in many different industries) and one gave this reply:

I worked at JPMC and so have read several articles about this issue closely over the past few years. Chase has apparently been more aggressive than other big banks at proactively shutting down suspicious business accounts – and royally pi**ing off some unsuspecting legitimate customers in the process, some of whom who took to the media.

I would call and make an appointment (I think you can actually do this on the app/website) before you bother showing up in person to the bank. At least to make sure if there is a manager that would be best to talk to that he or she is available. And be prepared for the fact that they probably won’t be able to tell you much or change anything.

These decisions are made in a totally separate, centralized department, largely based on software/algorithms. The way the decisions are made and the reasons behind it are closely guarded, even internally. I am not an expert on this exact situation, but I can tell you that there is a separate department for literally everything, and it’s frustrating for the bankers because they can’t really do anything including authorize the waiving of check holds like we could back in the day.

If the system says your check needs a hold, it gets a hold – this went even for my centimillionaire private bank clients. It was always insane to me, having come from regional banks where I had a lot more control. People would go to the branch or call me to talk about credit card issues, or their retail business account they set up online (not through me in the private bank) – those are a whole separate divisions and I had zero insight or say into the application, transactions, any of it. All I could do was give you the number you find on the back of your debit or credit card.

Out of curiosity, why did you do so many small transactions – was it just to save the wire transfer fee? Or you could have written her a check…I can see why the bank’s systems would flag this. But usually when something is suspicious like this we were asked to call the client and warn them about structuring and ask what was up. The unilateral closing of a relationship is a LOT more rare than suspicious activity.

If this “main account” is a business checking and not personal, that is probably a big part of the reason. In my memory of reading about this it was typically business accounts that ended up being suddenly closed like this. Especially if you don’t also have a personal account there.

As for other banks, they are really mostly all the same on the retail side. I had a Wells Fargo account for a while and liked their interface better than Chase’s. But at the end of the day retail banking is a total commodity. Not a lot of differentiation if you’re just using it for checking.

I will say the technology (app function and appearance, etc) is typically better at the big banks compared to the smaller players. Service varies totally by location regardless of size of institution.

Then there was one who offered this:

The only way I can think of to salvage your account right now would be to go into a Chase branch that has a “private client” arm, and offer to move your brokerage accounts and IRAs over to Chase, and become a member of the private bank. It will cause you some headache — in my experience, they are way more high touch than most members of the forum would like — but doing so would probably salvage your existing credit account.

To which I responded:

Yeah, I think giving them more business is not what I want to do…especially giving them IRA/brokerage funds. That’s way worse than starting over elsewhere.

To which they responded:

I’m surprised you feel this way? They haven’t closed your account yet, and you mentioned that you want to avoid the headache of changing your banking details everywhere.

Having a real person you can talk to at the bank to deal with logistical headaches like this is worth the phone calls every once in a while about asset allocations, etc.; especially as more and more functionality of banks get automated, and becomes more rigid.

His point was that if the bank knows you personally this could have either been avoided completely or at least you’d have someone in your corner if this ever happened (who knows if they could actually do anything anyway?)

My point was I didn’t want to have to jump through hoops and have a bigger relationship with them (by moving funds to them) because funds at a bank aren’t optimized (IMO) and subject to control by a company I don’t trust (and who was actively trying to stick it to me). It just wasn’t worth it to have this relationship for an odd, infrequent problem like this.

It turns out he had a mortgage that was large enough to qualify him as a private client so for him it was a no brainer. I, of course, have no mortgage and since giving more money for terrible customer service goes against my grain, that’s not a great solution for me (but could be for some reading this).

There was this comment as well:

Those transactions likely ran afoul with the fraud / anti-money laundering department and there are no progressive steps with Chase. Having three addresses in five years also sends your risk up on the big bank algorithms. I had a heck of a time getting approved to open my Amex Biz account after a three address move.

Chase will send out the closure letter and let the client decide if they are going to appeal. I’ve heard mixed reviews on if/when Chase allows appeals. You have Chase branches in the Triangle. I would go into one, explain probably what caused it, then ask if it can be appealed. If it can’t, can they give you a few extra months because you’ve had this account for X years and there are all these payments coming in / out?

Showing up in person with a logical story can’t hurt, I think they do give additional time. The local person may not be able to help other than being empathetic / giving you the same number, but they’ll log you showed up in person.

You won’t be the first person they interact with that has gone through this.

As the comments went on, I started to simmer at what Chase had done, with this comment summarizing how I was feeling:

This whole thing would make me livid as like you I’m a long time customer. I am slowing moving away from it with only 10K in my Chase account as it is in the front of my neighborhood and I like the access to cash in case of emergency. But I’ve moved everything to Fidelity Cash management and been extremely happy with it as it has all the functionality I needed…so that might be one to check out.

Most others used/recommended Fidelity Cash Management.

I replied to this post:

Yep, that’s the one we’re thinking of.

This may be a blessing in disguise.

Chase has been “great” because they are everywhere and we had them in Tennessee, Michigan, Oklahoma, Colorado, Florida, and here. It was easy to move and keep our bank the same.

But other than that, they are mostly terrible in every other category.

Then someone said:

You’d think someone here might be buddies with Jamie Dimon, and could make a call and poof! This all goes away!

That gave me an idea.

To see how the story continues, check out Chased around by Chase Bank