Bank Scamster

This relatively new guy at my bank really wants me to cheat the IRS. I’m self-employed and I get checks from different companies, so he starts being nosy and asking what I do. He tells me I definitely need their business account for my business. I tell him I’ve had a business account before and all it did for me was cost me extra fees.

“Well if you have a business account, then you can claim expenses for your business!” he tells me, as if this is revolutionary advice that I’d never have thought of myself.

“I already claim expenses for my business,” I tell him. “I don’t need a business name or a business account to do that.” Then he really starts getting into arguing with me, telling me how I should claim fake expenses and how I should buy an entire car and claim it on my tax return, all while taking FOREVER to give me my money so I can leave. He constantly uses “air quotes” as he tells me about all the things I should be claiming on my return and tells me about how his uncle has his own business and does this stuff all the time.

I tell him that I really don’t think it’s a good idea to cheat the IRS. This, of course, starts another argument where he says it’s not cheating, but it’s “getting creative!” or something like that. It was another air quotes term. I couldn’t believe a bank teller was insisting that I cheat on my taxes, though. Sadly, none of the other tellers or employees were nearby, so they didn’t get to witness this weirdo giving me the worst advice ever.

A day or two later I was back in the bank and once again he was the only teller there. He was just as enthusiastic about cheating the IRS this time, but I managed to escape quickly. All I can remember from this conversation is that I should buy 30 flatscreen computer monitors to claim as expenses, or something like that. THIS IS THE GUY THAT HAS ACCESS TO MY MONEY!

I went home and looked up his name on Facebook, finding him easily. If he’d had his uncle listed under the Family section, I probably would have called him up to ask him about all the tax cheating advice that he gives his nephew, but he didn’t so I didn’t look into it further.

Between that and the other tellers trying to hard-sell me stuff every time I go in there, I’ve mostly stopped going inside the bank anymore. At least in the drive-thru I can avoid eye contact and ignore their sales pitches by turning up the radio. Thanks for making an asocial person like me even more asocial, bank!