A man in Greece has filed a lawsuit against Bank of America, alleging that the financial institution screwed up and gave his account — and his $59,000 — to another person with the same name.

The plaintiff had opened up a Barnett Bank (now BofA) account when he was a college student in 1992, and, even though he’d moved back to Greece in 1997, he had been gradually making deposits in it as an emergency fund in case he ever chose to return to the U.S.

But in 2005, he went to check on the account and found that all but $1,400 of his cash had vanished.

According to the lawsuit, BofA goofed and swapped his account with that of another Florida man with the exact same name — but almost twice the plaintiff’s age. And that other customer decided to withdraw his windfall.

“The person had a different Social Security number, his ID didn’t match,” the man’s attorney tells the Tampa Tribune. “The bank should have known better. And now that they acknowledge someone made a mistake, they should make it right.”

The plaintiff says BofA initially promised to investigate but then stopped returning his calls. Attempts to involve authorities also went nowhere.

The bank would not comment on the story to the Tribune.

Consumerist readers may remember a recent story of a BofA customer who missed $30K in Social Security payments because the bank issued duplicate account numbers. In that case, the police were willing to help and the customer ultimately got her money back.

Lawsuit: Bank gave man’s account to another with same name [TBO.com]

Thanks to Rob for the tip!

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