CT AG Response to Inner City Press FOIA Shows Citi Stiffing Senior over $320 Charge

CT AG Response to Inner City Press FOIA Shows Citi Stiffing Senior over $320 Charge by Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book Substack SDNY COURTHOUSE, Sept 1 –   Connecticut's Attorney General has begun producing consumer complaint records in response to Inner City Press' state FOIA request concerning national banks, and the first batch includes a case worth reading in full: Joanne Saber, a Connecticut consumer over 60, versus Citibank, N.A.   The facts, as laid out in Saber's own complaint and confirmed by Citi's own written responses, are not in dispute. On July 26, 2025, Saber removed an authorized user from her Citi credit card account. The next day, July 27, she called Citi and explicitly instructed the bank to stop recurring charges tied to that authorization. Citi did not act on that instruction for nearly two weeks — by its own admission, recurring-charge suppression wasn't implemented until August 8. That same day, a $320 charge from "SQ *Mary Ann Duffy" posted to her account. When Saber disputed it, Citi denied the dispute, telling her the charge stood because its internal "security closure" process hadn't completed by August 8 — effectively billing her for the bank's own processing delay, not her own conduct.  Saber escalated in writing, in a formal pre-suit demand letter to Citi's Executive Response Unit and Legal Affairs: "Citi's failure to timely execute account servicing instructions does not create consumer liability... This dispute does not concern 'misuse by an authorized user'... It concerns failure to follow clear account servicing instructions after authorization was revoked." She asked for the $320 reversed and, separately, for Citi to produce the transcript of her July 27 call — the same call Citi had relied on internally while declining to hand over a recording or transcript to the consumer whose instructions were allegedly not followed. She gave Citi ten days before threatening small claims court, "with Citi's CFPB and executive correspondence... included as exhibits."  Also in this production: Wells Fargo's boilerplate acknowledgment of a separate complaint from Ardavan Abiri, promising a response within ten business days "if we need more time... we'll let you know" — language that, as this outlet has documented in other states' complaint files, frequently precedes months of delay rather than days. Capital One's file includes not a substantive response at all, but a form letter instructing Connecticut's AG office on the correct email address and mailing address to use when submitting future complaints — an odd artifact to find in a state regulator's own case file, suggesting the bank spends real effort routing complaints through preferred channels before it spends effort resolving them.  This is a partial review of an ongoing production. Inner City Press will continue reporting as more of Connecticut's files come in and are readable - we are waiting for the determination letter, too, having have some success unsealing in the District of Connecticut Federal Court. Watch this site *** Your support means a lot. As little as $5 a month helps keep us going and grants you access to exclusive bonus material on our Patreon page. Click here to become a patron. Feedback: Editorial [at] innercitypress.com Mail: Box 130222, Chinatown Station, NY NY 10013 Other, earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.  Copyright 2006-2026 Inner City Press, Inc. To request reprint or other permission, e-contact Editorial [at] innercitypress.com