- We all love juicy scammer stories, as long as they involve fake German heiresses or dubious party promoters pulling one over on somebody else because that would never happen to you, right?

But what if the biggest scammer you have to watch out for is the place you trust your money with the most?

Your bank?

- That's reportedly what happened to customers who had opened high-yield savings accounts with Capital One.

Usually, high-yield savings accounts pay interest rates that more or less follow Federal Reserve decisions.

If the interest rates set by the Fed go down, so do the interest rates on your savings accounts.

And if interest rates increase, as they did as part of the Fed's effort to curb inflation in 2022, the interest rate on your high-yield savings account should too.

- But for some Capital One customers, that didn't happen.

Allegedly the bank created a brand new high-yield savings product with those exciting higher rates to entice new customers and left old customers with the same measly rates they were getting before the Fed's rate hike.

Those customers didn't know they needed to switch accounts to get the new rates and missed out on over $2 billion of interest.

- [Philip] A lawyer who represents banks responded that financial institutions don't owe fiduciary obligation to their customers.

Basically insinuating that if a customer wants a high-yield savings account, it's their obligation to be constantly monitoring rates and switching accounts to get the best returns.

- [Julia] Customers thought that was totally unfair, and so did the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, who filed a lawsuit against Capital One in January 2025.

- But now with the industry watchdog's future uncertain, scams like these might become a lot harder to avoid.

(playful music) - The Capital One scandal isn't the only example of bad bank behavior.

In the early 2000s, many banks and lenders gave out mortgages to customers who couldn't afford them, and then packaged and sold these subprime mortgages to investors who didn't really know how risky they were.

When the housing bubble burst, millions of homeowners couldn't afford to make payments, and the ripple effect of these investments failing triggered a years long financial crisis that cost an estimated six million Americans their homes and nearly nine million their jobs.

- In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act aimed at preventing another great recession.

And that package of legislation was a brand new government agency to monitor banks, credit unions, mortgage and student loan servicers, and other entities that offer financial products to individuals called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

- The CFPB set up a portal where individual consumers could file complaints about financial services companies who they believed to be acting unfairly.

These complaints helped the CFPB uncover thousands of bad actors, including Capital One and their savings accounts switcheroo.

- These complaints sometimes resulted in lawsuits where the CFPB actually won back money for consumers, like in 2016 when they discovered that employees at Wells Fargo had opened more than two million bank accounts and credit cards for their customers without their permission, the CFPB fined Wells Fargo $100 million and forced them to refund more than 200 million in overdraft fees they had charged consumers on these fraudulent accounts.

- The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wasn't just making sure big banks behaved themselves.

The agency was also keeping watch over FinTech companies that didn't even exist when Dodd-Frank was passed.

Think Venmo transactions, cryptocurrency wallets, and buy now, pay later services like Klarna and Afterpay.

Earlier this year, the CFPB ordered Block, the operator of payment platform Cash App, to refund users up to $120 million after it found that the app had failed to protect users from fraud.

- But all of this work came to a screeching halt in February of 2025 when the agency's newly appointed administrator, Russell Vought, ordered its 1,700 employees to leave the office and stop work tasks.

While employees scrambled to respond to this sudden shutdown, special government employee, Elon Musk, logged onto the social media platform X to post, "CFPB RIP."

- With the CFPB on pause, the Capital One lawsuit and dozens of other enforcement actions are stuck in an indefinite limbo.

While regulations still technically apply, they are no longer able to enforce them.

- [Philip] The CFPB has survived challenges before, like a 2020 Supreme Court ruling that gave the president more power to fire the CFPB administrator, and a legal challenge to its funding structure where the Supreme Court upheld the agency's funding.

- This time might be different though.

Some have pointed out that major allies of the Trump administration have a strong interest in seeing the bureau shuttered.

The CFPB has investigated Tesla Finance, the arm of the electric car company that offers auto loans over consumer complaints about their debt collection practices.

- The agency also would have regulated Elon Musk's social media platform X as they plan to add payment services to it.

Now with Musk's Department of Government Efficiency at the controls of the CFPB's HR and payment systems, the agency no longer has the power to hold these companies accountable.

- But it's also possible that the pause could motivate the old guard financial sector to rally around the bureau instead of against it.

JPMorgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon, has pointed out that the CFPB was the only regulatory body reigning in financial technology products from Apple Pay to Zelle.

While banks still face regulation from agencies like the FDIC, their newer, more techie competitors can, oh, move fast and break things.

Suddenly, regulation doesn't seem so bad.

- [Philip] In late March, a federal judge sided with the bureau's employees and consumer advocates by ordering an injunction against the Trump administration's efforts to gut the CFPB.

She found that their lawsuit would likely succeed in arguing that a federal agency established by Congress can only be eliminated by Congress.

- [Julia] It's too early to know whether this will save the bureau from being dissolved and dismantled.

But as of this recording, you can still access the CFPB's database to read consumer complaints about potentially risky financial services, or submit a complaint of your own.

- And consider taking your own pause to make sure to read and fully understand the terms of any new financial product you consider, especially those that aren't regulated by other government agencies like the FDIC.

- And that's our two cents.

- And that's our two cents.