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Zelle Fraud Is Rising. And Banks Aren’t Coming to the Rescue

NNPA NEWSWIRE — “Authorized” vs “Unauthorized:” Under a federal rule known as Regulation E, banks are technically only liable to cover fraudulent activity when it involves “unauthorized” transactions. Say, when someone steals your credit card and makes purchases without your permission. But if someone persuades you to send them $500 through a phishing scam, banks consider that “authorized” and won’t reimburse those funds.
The post Zelle Fraud Is Rising. And Banks Aren’t Coming to the Rescue first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

Published

3 years ago

October 4, 2022

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By Analysis by Allison Morrow and CNN Business | The Atlanta Voice

Zelle, the popular payment app, is under fire for how it handles (or rather, doesn’t handle) fraud and scams that have exploded on the platform in recent years.

The New York Times called Zelle out in two reports earlier this year. That grabbed the attention of US senators, who pressed the CEOs of the nation’s large banks that own the platform in hearings last month and began an investigation into the service.

Here’s the deal: On Monday, Senator Elizabeth Warren’s office said its investigation into Zelle showed that fraud and theft are not only rampant but getting worse. And once people report fraudulent transactions, banks are reimbursing only a small fraction of the swindled customers.

“Big banks own and profit from Zelle but are failing to make their customers whole for both authorized and unauthorized fraudulent activity on the platform, despite their claims that it is safe,” Warren’s office wrote.

Key things to know:

Zelle (rhymes with “tell”) was created in 2017 as the banking industry’s answer to Venmo and Cash App.
The fintech companies behind those apps were doing what big banks had failed to do for decades — make transferring money to your friend who just paid for dinner easy and free and fast.
So the big banks got together and created Zelle, which was lame and almost no one used it till around 2020, when digital payments took off in response to the pandemic.
Zelle is now by far the largest peer-to-peer payment system in America. Last year, according to Zelle, transactions totaled $490 billion, up 59% from the year before. (PayPal-owned Venmo, its closest rival, handled $230 billion.)
The service is operated by Early Warning Systems, a fintech company owned by seven of the US’s largest banks.

Naturally, where the internet and money collide is where scammers get to work.

Zelle’s size and accessibility — it’s built right into participating banks’ apps — make it the “preferred tool of fraudsters and other bad actors,” according to the report from Warren’s office.

Among the investigation’s key findings, which corroborate anecdotal evidence reported by the Times:

Banks are not repaying 90% of cases in which customers were tricked into making payments on Zelle.

An estimated $440 million was lost by Zelle users through frauds and scams in 2021. But banks “appear not to have provided sufficient recourse to their customers.”

“Authorized” vs “Unauthorized:” Under a federal rule known as Regulation E, banks are technically only liable to cover fraudulent activity when it involves “unauthorized” transactions. Say, when someone steals your credit card and makes purchases without your permission. But if someone persuades you to send them $500 through a phishing scam, banks consider that “authorized” and won’t reimburse those funds.

BUT… The bank data reviewed by Warren’s office suggest even the bulk of unauthorized cases are going unpaid. For example: PNC Bank indicated that its customers reported 10,683 cases of unauthorized payments totaling over $10.6 million. It refunded only 1,495 cases, totaling $1.46 million.

Zelle sought to downplay the report and didn’t specifically address Warren’s allegations Monday. In a statement, the company said: “Tens of millions of consumers use Zelle without incident, with more than 99.9% of payments completed without any report of fraud or scam,” adding that the proportion of fraud and scams has steadily decreased as its user numbers have climbed.

The Bank Policy Institute, a banking industry group, also disputed Warren’s findings and claimed that Zelle’s rivals Venmo and CashApp receive more reports of disputed transactions.

“Zelle is the safest peer-to-peer network,” it said in a statement Monday. “For any real discussion of online fraud, the focus belongs elsewhere.”

BOTTOM LINE

It’s kind of crazy to remember how anyone moved money among friends before the advent of payment apps. Did I actually carry cash with me? On the first every month did I take my little checkbook out and literally write out my portion of the rent on a magic slip of paper and then just hand it to my roommates? Wild. It would not surprise me if the original idea for a payments app came from a restaurant server who was fed up with splitting bills unevenly across eight different cards.

But that’s the pre-internet world Regulation E was made for. It’s a 1978 rule that only got a 21st century electronic payments update by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau late last year. It wasn’t made for the world of instant payments, and could hardly have envisioned how easy the internet would make it to swindle people out of their money.

Warren’s report on Zelle could add pressure on regulators including the CFPB to update its guidance.

“Given this uncertain landscape and the banks’ abdication of responsibility, regulatory clarity is needed to further protect Zelle users,” researchers wrote in the report, noting that the CFPB has regulatory authority over peer-to-peer platforms including Zelle.

The post Zelle fraud is rising. And banks aren’t coming to the rescue appeared first on The Atlanta Voice.

The post Zelle Fraud Is Rising. And Banks Aren’t Coming to the Rescue first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

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Poll Shows Support for Policies That Help Families Afford Child Care

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

Published

3 days ago

March 2, 2026

Oakland Post

By First Five Years Fund

New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

The national survey was conducted by UpOne Insight on behalf of the First Five Years Fund from January 13–18, 2026.

Key findings include:

• Parents need help: 80% of voters say the ability of working parents to find and afford child care is either in a state of crisis or a major problem.

• This is an affordability issue: 82% believe federal child care funding will help lower costs for working families — including 69% of Republicans, 84% of Independents, and 94% of Democrats.

• And there continues to be strong support (62%) for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), a federal program that makes it possible for hundreds of thousands of families to afford safe, quality care for their children while parents work or go to school, including a majority of Republicans, 63% of Independents and 72% of Democrats.

• Support for funding child care programs remains strong: 75% believe child care funding should be increased or kept at current levels — including 75% of Republicans, 85% of Independents, and 97% of Democrats.

• 74% say funding for child care is an important and good use of tax dollars, including a majority of Republicans, three-quarters of Independents, and nine in ten Democrats.

FFYF Executive Director Sarah Rittling said, “Voters across the country are sending a clear message: federal child care and early learning programs work. These investments help parents stay in the workforce, strengthen families, and support healthy child development. They have also long had strong bipartisan support in Congress. At a time when affordability is top of mind for families, continued federal funding is essential to ensure child care remains accessible and within reach.”

First Five Years Fund works to protect, prioritize, and build bipartisan support for quality child care and early learning programs at the federal level. Reliable, affordable, and high-quality early learning and child care can be transformative, not only enhancing a child’s prospects for a brighter future but also bolstering working parents and fostering economic stability nationwide.

We work with Congress and the Administration to identify federal solutions that work for families with young children, as well as states and communities. We work with policymakers to identify ways to increase access to affordable, high-quality child care and early learning programs for children. And we collaborate with advocacy groups to help align best practices with the best possible policies. http://www.ffyf.org

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Trump’s MAGA Allies are Creating Executive Order Plan to Steal the 2026 Midterms

NNPA NEWSWIRE — The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

Published

6 days ago

February 27, 2026

Oakland Post

By Lauren Victoria Burke, NNPA Newswire Correspondent

A group of MAGA pro-Trump activists, who say they are working in coordination with the White House, are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that would claim without evidence that China interfered with the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential to President Joe Biden by over 7 million votes. Since Trump lost to Biden in 2020, he has repeatedly claimed that the election was “stolen” without evidence. The report of a group of “Trump allies” preparing an executive order to give Trump power over elections was first reported by The Washington Post.

The lies around the right-wing campaign that pushed falsehoods that the 2020 election was stolen was trafficked through right-wing media, particularly Fox News. Fox News was then sued for defamation for the claims by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox lost the case and had to settle for the largest defamation amount on record of $787.5 million in April 2023.

The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

The story in The Washington Post arrives as Trump increasingly signals that he may take actions that would alter the result of the 2026 midterms. The Republicans are widely expected to lose as their approval ratings plummet as a result of a failing economy under Trump. Over 50 members of Congress have announced they will retire this year and not return in 2027.

The Trump Department of Justice, which now has a large image of Trump on the side of it, “sued five new states Thursday [Feb. 26, 2026] demanding access to their unredacted voter rolls — escalating a campaign that has been rejected by multiple federal courts and faces resistance from Republican-led states as well,” according to Democracy Docket, a group that works to protect voting rights.

Trump claimed back in late 2020, the last year of his first term, that he had the authority to issue an executive order related to mail-in voting for the 2020 elections — which he would then lose. But the Constitution states that control of elections lies with the states. As the GOP works to place hurdles in front of voting, Democrats worked to make voting easier.

In March 2021, President Biden signed an executive order calling on federal agencies to expand voting access as part of the Biden Administration’s effort “to promote and defend the right to vote for all Americans who are legally entitled to participate in elections.”

Trump’s focus is clearly on altering the November 2026 midterm elections. Trump’s polling numbers and the elections and special elections that have taken place around the U.S. over the last year clearly indicate that Republicans are about to be hit by a blue wave of Democratic victories.

Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent investigative journalist and the founder of Black Virginia News. She is a political analyst who appears on #RolandMartinUnfiltered and hosts the show LAUREN LIVE on YouTube @LaurenVictoriaBurke. She can be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on twitter at @LVBurke

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PRESS ROOM: NBA Hall of Fame Nominee Terry Cummings Joins 100 Black Men of DeKalb County to Launch Victory & Values Initiative

NNPA NEWSWIRE — NBA Hall of Fame nominee and Basketball Legend Terry Cummings was administered the official member’s oath and ceremonially pinned during a special induction ceremony held on Friday, February 20th.

Published

6 days ago

February 27, 2026

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Cummings becomes an honorary member, joining other role model sports stars

NBA Hall of Fame nominee and Basketball Legend Terry Cummings has officially become an honorary member of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County, marking a powerful new chapter for the 100 Black Men and youth development across the region.

Cummings was administered the official member’s oath and ceremonially pinned during a special induction ceremony held on Friday, February 20th. The moment signified more than membership — it marked the launch of the organization’s transformative new platform, the Victory & Values Initiative.

The Victory & Values Initiative is a groundbreaking youth development program designed to empower elementary and middle school students through a dynamic blend of sports, mentorship, and STEM exposure. The initiative focuses on building health, discipline, character, leadership, and access to opportunity — creating pathways for long-term academic and personal success.

“This is about more than sports,” said Cummings during the ceremony. “It’s about using the platform of athletics to teach life lessons, create access, and build the next generation of leaders.”

The induction ceremony also featured notable guests including NASCAR’s newest Star Driver, Lavar Scott and NASCAR Director of Athletic Performance, Phil Horton, who joined Cummings for a powerful Victory & Values Town Hall discussion. The Town Hall was moderated by renowned Sports Emcee John Hollins and focused on leadership, resilience, discipline, and the importance of mentorship in shaping young lives.

A “Day at NASCAR” for 75+ Youth

Cummings wasted no time getting to work. On his first full day as an honorary member, he joined his new brothers of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County to host a “Day at NASCAR,” escorting more than 75 youth to a once-in-a-lifetime experience at EchoPark Motor Speedway (formerly Atlanta Motor Speedway).

The youth participants received behind-the-scenes access including: an exclusive tour of Pit Row, access to the Garage Area and exploration of the interactive Fan Zone.

The experience culminated with a surprise meet-and-greet and Q&A session with NASCAR Superstar Bubba Wallace, who shared insights on perseverance, preparation, and breaking barriers in professional sports.

The day served as a living example of the ‘Victory & Values’ Initiative in action — exposing youth to new industries, expanding their vision for the future, and connecting them directly with high- level mentors and role models.

Building Leaders Through Access and Mentorship

The 100 Black Men of DeKalb County – a chapter of the largest, national mentoring organization in the county – continues to expand its footprint with programs focused on academic excellence, economic empowerment, leadership development, and health & wellness.

The launch of ‘Victory & Values’ represents a strategic expansion of the organization’s impact

intentionally integrating athletics and STEM to engage youth at an early age while reinforcing core principles such as integrity, accountability, teamwork, and perseverance.

“Our mission has always been to mentor the next generation,” said Vaughn Irons, President-Elect of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County. “With Terry Cummings joining the brotherhood, along with partners in NASCAR and professional sports, we are creating unprecedented access and exposure for our youth. Victory & Values is about turning inspiration into structured opportunity.”

By connecting elementary and middle school students to professional athletes, executives, STEM professionals, and community leaders, the initiative aims to:

Increase youth exposure to careers in sports business, engineering, and performance science
Strengthen mentorship pipelines
Promote physical wellness and mental resilience
Build character-driven leadership at an early age

Open Invitation to Youth and Families

All youth are invited to participate in the Victory & Values Initiative, along with the other countless, impactful programs offered by the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County.

Parents and guardians seeking mentorship, leadership development, academic enrichment, and transformative exposure opportunities for their children are encouraged to connect with the organization.

As NBA Legend Terry Cummings’ induction demonstrates, Victory & Values is more than a program — it is a movement designed to build champions in life, not just in sports.

For more information about the Victory & Values Initiative or to enroll a student, contact: 100 Black Men of DeKalb County at Phone at 404.241.1338, info@100bmod.org or Tee Foxx at 404.791.6525,