Some 10-year-olds sell cookies and lemonade to earn a little spending money, but not Kinley Maner. Kinley, from Thatcher, Arizona, makes money raising and selling chickens at the local fair.
“She really enjoyed it, had a lot of fun and learned a lot about chickens,” her father, JR Maner, told Family On Your Side of Arizona. “It really taught him strict obedience to being out there and taking care of an animal.”
After showing off his feathered friends at the Graham County Fair, Kinley, like many people who display animals at the fair, put them up for auction. Once the auction ended, Kinely managed to sell her six chickens for a cool $2,100 and change, which her mother, Kali, electronically deposited into her bank account. A day later, however, Chase Bank froze the check and then closed Kali’s account entirely. A year later, Kinley had still not received his profits.
Kinley’s mother spent several hours on the phone with Chase, trying to figure out what happened to the girl’s prize money and why her account was closed. According to Kalli, Chase said that when bank officials checked the phone number for the Small Stock Association, which issued the payment, it was out of service. This seemed suspicious to them, so they froze the funds and closed his account.
“[Chase’s] The ultimate answer is, sorry, Kinley is not going to get his money back,” JR told reporters. “And there’s nothing we can do unless we can verify that check.”
So the man from the Small Stock Association who wrote the check went to Chase to verify it in person. According to the Maners, he visited three times to try to verify the check, but Chase said he could only verify it over the phone.
Chase’s actions in freezing Kinley’s check and closing Kali’s account align with standard banking practices for risk management and fraud prevention, particularly within the context of KYC (know your customer) and AML (fight against money laundering). When banks encounter checks from unknown sources or suspect fraud, they can report the transaction. Freezing funds and closing accounts is a protective measure used to prevent fraud or money laundering.
