A Black woman entrepreneur who went to renew a business debit card at Ameris Bank in Alpharetta, Georgia, walked out with a frozen bank account and a feeling she had just been racially profiled. Now she and her attorney are demanding that the bank make it right.
In a 9-minute TikTok post, an exasperated Alexis Vaughn, who runs an insurance technology firm with her husband, Marvin Vaughn, explained that she went to the bank branch in Alpharetta the day before Thanksgiving to replace a debit card that wasn’t working.
The service she received from the teller for this routine request took much longer than usual and included odd inquiries, Vaughn said.
As she waited, the teller, who was white and “who I felt was disrespecting me — she looked me up and down,” Vaughn said, seemed to call the bank’s corporate office to verify information about her account, including her balance. Then the woman told Vaughn she had also looked up her business on the Georgia Secretary of State website…