The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has sued Comerica Bank for allegedly charging illegal fees, mishandling fraud complaints and deliberately disconnecting service calls.

The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas seeks a judge’s order to halt the alleged practices at the subsidiary of Comerica Inc. It also seeks to provide refunds to affected customers that includes recipients of Social Security, Supplemental Security Income and veterans benefits, and pay unspecified civil penalties into the CFPB’s victim relief fund.

Comerica Bank, one of the 25 largest bank holding companies in the country, is headquartered in Dallas, but was founded in Detroit and based in the city until 2007.

“The CFPB is suing Comerica Bank for illegally harming disabled and older Americans who count on Social Security and other federal benefits,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a statement Friday. “By deliberately disconnecting millions of calls and harvesting illegal junk fees, Comerica boosted its bottom line at the expense of Americans living on a fixed income.”

The focus of the lawsuit is the bank’s 3.4 million Direct Express cardholders who the bureau described as Americans who mostly don’t have bank accounts and are receiving federal benefits. It accuses Comerica of intentionally disconnecting 24 million customer service calls, charging illegal ATM fees to more than 1 million cardholders and impeding customers from exercising their rights under the law.

In a statement sent by spokesperson Matt Barnhart, Comerica Bank accuses the bureau of “doubling down” with a countersuit after it filed its own lawsuit against the bureau last month that challenges the CFPB’s “regulatory overreach” and its handling of the case, saying it “undermined the legitimacy of its own investigation.”

“Throughout the CFPB’s investigation, we have cooperated by sharing information and data to illustrate the unique nature of this program and the fact that we operate with the oversight of the Fiscal Service,” the statement said. “Despite our good faith efforts to provide this critical context, the CFPB has consistently ignored our arguments and documentation.”

It added: “Today, the CFPB doubled down by filing a countersuit against Comerica Bank. We will continue to vigorously defend our record as the financial agent for the Direct Express program and remain committed to serving our cardholders.”

The CFPB said Comerica cut corners to boost its bottom line by not having sufficient customer service staff to handle calls for recipients, resulting in what it says were millions of purposefully disconnected calls and leaving some customers waiting several hours to speak with a representative about unauthorized transactions, charge disputes and lost or stolen cards.

The bureau said cardholders were charged ATM fees in situations where they were entitled legally to free withdrawals. It accused Comerica of misleading fraud victims by saying there had been no error when the bank had found enrollment fraud in the program. Illegal terms of service directed customers to contact merchants to stop pre-authorized payments transfers from their account in situations where the law required Comerica to stop the transfers itself, according to the bureau.

— Breana Noble / The Detroit News