An entrepreneur in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, filed a civil lawsuit against her bank, alleging an “overzealous and racist” bank investigator caused her car dealership business to collapse. The investigator is being accused of falsely accusing the business owner of fraud and causing her creditors to sever ties.
Tianna Williams owned a booming automobile business prior to the false fraud accusations
Williams went into auto trade after dropping out of high school as a teenager. She would buy cars at a low price, fix them, and sell them to working-class people with no or bad credit, according to The Atlanta Black Star.
Williams, who had made $1 million in sales by March 2023, was eventually approached by Shazard Mohammed, the manager of a local M&T Bank branch. He told her he was interested in supporting her business and invited her to apply for a line of credit, according to the lawsuit she filed in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas.
Williams opened a bank account at M&T online, met with Mohammed, made initial deposits of $35,000 and applied for a $100,000 line of credit. A few days later, she went to access the funds on her account and discovered it was frozen while being denied access, per her lawsuit. Mohammed reportedly told her that her credit application was still in process, but did not say why her account was frozen.
Williams then found out that Hannah Gmeinder, an investigator at the bank, had initiated a fraud investigation into her business because they found the initial deposit suspicious. Gmeinder also reportedly contacted two lenders Williams did business with and told them she “had engaged in wrongful and illegitimate business practices” without evidence.
It eventually took over a month for the bank to find that no fraud had occurred and restore Williams’s access to her account.
The two commercial auto lenders Tiana Williams did business with pulled out of doing business with her due to the allegations
As a result, Williams’ business experienced a nearly total loss of revenue, and the false accusations led to a “complete devastation of her professional reputation.”
“I would be a franchise by now. I was getting very popular in the automotive business,” Williams said of the opportunities she would have had if not for the false accusations of fraud. “The amount of money I would have made, with the [new credit line and] difference in the interest rate, I would have sped into the franchise world.”
“I have lost my sense of purpose,” she added. “This has created very low self-esteem in me. My life was completely altered. I feel I earned my name in the automotive business, I was a great salesman and helped my mom get the best treatment when she had cancer. And now I have nothing to fall back on. I have five children, and it’s just me. I was prepared to give them a specific lifestyle, generational wealth, and it was all torn away.”
In her lawsuit, Tiana Williams alleges that she was a victim of racial prejudice
Williams asked Gmeinder why she was being investigated and the investigator allegedly said, “You people have a way of trying to make things look legitimate when they are actually fraudulent.”
“I really hope you don’t mean, by ‘you people,’ what it sounds like,” Williams replied, according to the lawsuit. “Are you talking about salesmen, women, or Black people? I hope it’s not Black people.”
Gmeinder then told Williams she would do her research, may contact her at her own discretion, and asked her to no longer contact her.
“Even if you are proven legitimate, I’m going to make sure I put you out of business,” Gmeinder reportedly added.
The bank denied the claims, yet a March 29, 2023, email from Gmeinder to M&T bank managers reads, “Doing my best to not let her win on my watch.”
The lawsuit accuses Shazard Mohammed and M&T Bank of fraudulent inducement
There are also claims of tortious interference with contractual relations and negligent failure to train and supervise.
“A promising future in an industry that Plaintiff worked to enter has been derailed for no reason other than spite, racism and self-righteousness of an overzealous and unrestrained fraud investigator,” the lawsuit reads.
Williams’ attorney Dean Malik said his client is open to a settlement: “I hope to make my client whole and achieve justice, one way or the other,” he said.
Williams’s goal is “to go back in business and put her in a position as if it had never happened in the first place, to restore that future they took from her,” Malik added. “If I can do it by settlement, then that’s perfectly acceptable, but we’re ready, we’re perfectly confident in going to trial too, if that doesn’t work out.”
The post Black Entrepreneur Sues Bank After False Claims Of Fraud Caused Her Automobile Business To Collapse appeared first on Blavity.
