In a lawsuit filed this week, New York Attorney General Letitia James claimed that over $1 billion was stolen from Zelle users via fraud between 2017 and 2023.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) filed a lawsuit in December 2024 alleging the same thing, but when that lawsuit was dropped in March 2025, New York’s attorney general decided to file a suit of her own against the digital payment service to seek compensation for New York consumers.
The new lawsuit claims that Early Warning Services, LLC (EWS), the company that owns the Zelle app, knew fraud was a problem on the app but chose not to do anything about it. In response to the news, a Zelle spokesperson called the lawsuit “a political stunt to generate press, not progress.”…