With the number of Americans with declining savings — 49 percent of adults have less or no savings compared to a year ago — the last thing people need is for their bank to somehow make their savings completely disappear. And yet, that’s what happened to one Orange County-based woman who has made a TikTok account to try and draw attention to her case.


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According to a video posted to the platform earlier this month, Denisse Devine recently learned that according to her bank, Wells Fargo, there is “no history, no record, no indication” that she ever had a savings account with them. Wells Fargo asked her for proof of an account by showing them a bank statement, but she said that she can only access those by going into her account.




In a second video, she provides more information, including the fact that she had the account for more than a decade. Unable to access her account, on October 3rd she went into a Wells Fargo branch, which is where a manager told her that there was no record of her ever having a savings account with them and that he was unable to access the statements from her checking account. The next day, she received an email from Wells Fargo telling her that they will contact her within two days, and they need 10 business days to figure out the issue.



Finally, on October 25th, Wells Fargo contacted her and let her know that according to their records, her savings account was closed in 2018 with an empty balance. They also said they would mail her the statements from both her savings and checking accounts.


Devine is pretty despondent in the latest video, telling her followers, “I feel so sad, so defeated, I really don’t know what’s gonna happen, or if I’ll be able to get my money back.” She ends the video imploring people to close their accounts with Wells Fargo or other big banks, and also opt in to receive paper statements so nobody else finds themselves in her position.


While many commenters were in agreement that Wells Fargo is a particularly shitty bank — one wrote, “I’ve been in banking for 17 years. Wells Fargo stays in trouble” — others found the story hard to believe. Still more suggested alternatives for what had happened, including the possibility that the account had gone dormant after not being used.


Whatever the case, you can’t say that by documenting her story publicly, she isn’t going for broke.