A retired FBI intelligence oversight analyst has revealed that Bank of America (BOA) was investigating the purchases made by its customers with credit and debit cards, and provided the federal agency with a list of all transactions, listing at the top all those who purchased guns.
The analyst George Hill testified before the House Judiciary Committee that the bank voluntarily provided the FBI's Washington Field Office (WFO) with a list of individuals who made transactions on its cards in the Virginia, Maryland and DC areas.
BOA reportedly made the collection of this data between January 5 and 7 and all of this information was distributed to FBI field offices across the country.
"The Bank of America, with no directive from the FBI, datamined its customer base(...) they datamined a date range of 5 to 7 January of any BOA customer who used a BOA product. And by ‘BOA product’ I mean a debit card or a credit card. They compiled that list. And then, on the top of that list, they put anyone who had purchased a firearm during any date," Hill said.
Retired supervisory intelligence analyst George Hill blew the whistle on the FBI saying the agency used data mining from Bank of America about customers and transactions to track information on possible participants in the January 6th protest.@jsolomonReports @AmandaHead pic.twitter.com/hacVE8WmU3
— Real America's Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) February 9, 2023
Connections between the BOA and the FBI
This is not the first time it has come to light that Bank of America has decided to turn over personal information about its customers to the federal agency. In February 2021Fox News host Tucker Carlson revealed that the bank was secretly turning over private customer transaction records to the feds to be investigated for "extremism" and even domestic terrorism.
According to the Daily Caller, the bank's criteria for adding people to the secret lists included anytime purchases (T-shirts, baseball caps or even trigger locks) at gun stores.