They say it was a mistake but I highly doubt that the email wrote itself. I work in email marketing (the honest kind) and usually an email like that woul dhev the be drafted up, agreed upon, coded into email format, put into a database so it could match peoples email addresses and populate dynamic areas of the email (such as the users account # and name based on their email address) and then sent out.

I think that they either:

a. They try to get enough info together to sell to 3rd parties and this was 1 of their methods but didn’t realize that it would piss so many people off. Once it was obvious that they were stepping out of bounds they cried “mistake”

b. A way to get people to withdraw their own money because they are running into liquidity issues with the 6% interest.

About a month before this email I got another one which asked me to fax a recent bank statement to prove that the linked bank account was in fact mine. Problem is that I had already verified that it was mine through 2 trial deposits thay had put into that very bank account.

About 4 or 5 days before the Due Diligence email I tried to transfer about $10K from my savings but that transaction was mysteriously denied by FNBO.

FNBO is shady – its not worth the extra 1% interest.

The gov’t is probably leaning on them and they seem scared about their own liability if a terrorist should happen to have an account there. So I fault the Patriot Act and secret national security letters.

But I also blame FNBO for consenting to being jerked around like a 10lb poodle, at the expense of their customers’ satisfaction.