Lawsuit: $3M+ in rare coins missing after Bank of America drilled open safe deposit box

After rare coins worth an estimated $3.6 million went missing, a customer of a now-shuttered Bank of America branch in metro Detroit is questioning whether safe deposit boxes, where the coins had been stored, are as "safe" as their name implies.

The customer is a rare coin collector who lives near Windsor, Ontario. He kept some of his collection in the U.S. for when he visited coin auctions in the states.

The customer's lawsuit against Bank of America, filed last month in U.S. District Court in Detroit, describes how the collector had a savings account and a safe deposit box rental at the Bank of America branch at 6071 Middlebelt Road in Garden City.

The box held 107 rare silver and gold coins, plus 17 additional less valuable coins.

Then Bank of America permanently closed the Garden City branch in June 2021. The closure happened during the COVID-19 pandemic, while the U.S.-Canadian border was still closed to nonessential travel.

According to the lawsuit, Bank of America claimed it mailed the man, Levend Coskun, three notices between March and April 2021 advising him the branch was closing and that he needed to clear out his safe deposit box. But the notices were sent to an incorrect address, the lawsuit claims, and so Coskun never received them.

Notices also may have been sent to a U.S. post office box that the man closed in August 2020 — during the pandemic — because he couldn't cross the border to retrieve the mail.

At the same time, Bank of America continued to send regular statements to Coskun's correct home address in the Windsor area, according to the lawsuit.

With the coin collector, Coskun, stuck home in Canada, the bank drilled into his safe deposit box and removed the contents, the lawsuit says. Normally, opening the safe deposit box requires the simultaneous insertion of keys by the customer and a bank branch official.

Coskun's lawyer, Craig Weber, of the Googasian Firm in Bloomfield Hills, said it's strange that the bank never tried to reach Coskun through email or phone about the looming branch and deposit box closure.

"Why didn’t they just pick up the phone and say, 'Hey, there’s an issue here. We’re going to close the bank and you’ve got to get your contents?' " Weber said in an interview last month. "It’s right during COVID, they know that he’s in Canada and can’t cross the border."

Coskun's first indication something was wrong was seeing a $64 credit on his June 2021 bank statement for "safe deposit box eligible refund."

That is when he contacted Bank of America and learned the contents of his box had been sent to an out-of-state "secure" location.

The U.S.-Canada border reopened for all COVID-vaccinated travelers in late 2021. Coskun finally crossed over to Michigan in January 2023, and made arrangements for his coins to be shipped from the secure facility to a Bank of America branch on the west side of Detroit on Grand River, the lawsuit says.

On Jan. 17, 2023, a Bank of America employee reportedly shipped the coins in a standard UPS box. The package was sent via UPS Next Day Air and addressed to a branch employee at the Grand River location. The package was recorded as weighing 8 pounds, the lawsuit says.

But six days passed without any communication from Bank of America, according to the lawsuit, and the coin collector reached out via email to the branch employee. Then the employee claimed that she had been trying to reach him by phone, although Coskun's lawyer says he never received the calls.

At last an in-person meeting was scheduled in the bank branch. During the Jan. 27, 2023, meeting, the employee presented the UPS package that was supposed to contain all the contents of the safe deposit box. But the coin collector realized something was wrong.

For one, the package appeared to have already been opened, the lawsuit says, yet the branch employee to whom it had been addressed denied any knowledge as to who opened it or why it was opened.

And the package no longer weighed 8 pounds — but was just under 2 pounds, the lawsuit says. The 107 coins were supposed to be inside five plastic bags, but all the bags were missing. The only things inside the box: the 17 less valuable coins and a sheet of bubble wrap.

The collector next filled out a claim form to request a Bank of America investigation into the whereabouts of the missing coins.

Weber said Coskun also went to Detroit police, but was told that it was a civil matter.

In the end, Bank of America's internal investigation didn't turn up many answers. The bank informed Coskun last May that it was closing its investigation and denying his claim, the lawsuit says.

Coskun had a formal appraisal of the missing coins conducted in February that estimated their market value at $3.6 million. His lawsuit against Bank of America alleges breach of contract, willful acts of misconduct, gross negligence and other claims.

Neither a Bank of America representative nor their listed attorney in the case returned messages seeking comment.

Contesting the claims

Jerry Pluard, cofounder of Safe Deposit Box Insurance Coverage, said it is unfortunately not uncommon for large banks to deny responsibility for the lost contents of safe deposit boxes. His company sells insurance on safe deposit boxes to consumers that covers risks including robbery, fire, flood or a bank losing the contents.

"The industry takes the view that they will always contest these type of claims, no matter what the factual situation may be," he said. “There are lots and lots of customers who have experienced the exact same thing that he’s had.”

Pluard said there has been a trend in recent years of larger banks, such as Bank of America, revising the legal terms of their rental agreements for safe deposit boxes that limit bank liability for any lost contents.

The new terms are “less and less consumer friendly and more defensive in protecting the bank’s interests," Pluard said, typically by capping or releasing the bank from liability or damages on the contents in the boxes. The new terms then will take precedence over whatever terms existed when a bank customer first signed up for the box.

“Historically they do not settle and they force people to litigate and then they will appeal," Pluard said.

Federal courts have generally been upholding the validity of those liability-limit legal terms in cases where a customer who lost property from a safe deposit box sues the bank, he said.

A 2019 story in the New York Times described how a California couple sued Bank of America after an experience similar to that of the Windsor-area coin collector. The couple claimed they never received the bank's letters that their local branch was closing, and therefore didn't learn about it until after their safe deposit box had been drilled open.

Then they discovered that multiple items were missing — jewelry, diamonds, coins, $24,000 in rare currency — when they went to retrieve the contents of the box from a bank storage facility.

After a trial, a jury in 2017 awarded them $2.5 million for the lost items, plus $2 million in punitive damages. But the bank challenged the verdict and said its liability shouldn't exceed 10 times the annual rent for the box, according to the New York Times story. In the end, a judge reduced the bank's total damages to just over $150,000.

Pluard said instances of lost items from deposit boxes have been happening with greater frequency because many banks have been shutting down offices and branches, especially since the pandemic. Nearly 275 bank offices closed in Michigan between June 30, 2019 — before the pandemic — and June 30 of last year, according to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data.

A reason why larger banks sometimes send letters advising customers about a forthcoming deposit box closure to an outdated or incorrect address is because the banks have been aiming to get out of the safe deposit box business and may not switch over safe deposit box customers' personal information to their newer digital platforms, Pluard said.

So when a customer updates his or her official contact information with the bank, that change may not carry through to the safe deposit box rental, he said.

Banks including JP Morgan Chase and Capital One have in recent years stopped offering safe deposit boxes for new customers.

Contact JC Reindl: 313-378-5460 or jcreindl@freepress.com . Follow him on X @ jcreindl .

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Lawsuit: $3M+ in rare coins missing after Bank of America drilled open safe deposit box