Some 10-year-olds sell cookies and lemonade to earn a bit of spending cash, but not Kinley Maner. Kinley, from Thatcher, Arizona, is earning money by raising and selling chickens at the local fair.
“She really enjoyed it, had a lot of fun, learned a lot about chickens,” her father, J.R. Maner told Arizona’s Family On Your Side. “It really taught her kind of strict obedience of being out there and taking care of an animal.”
After showing her feathered friends at the Graham County Fair, Kinley, like many people who show animals at the fair, put them up for auction. When the bidding was over, Kinely managed to sell her six chickens for a whopping $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 still hadn’t received her profits.
Kinley’s mom spent several hours on the phone with Chase, trying to figure out what happened to the girl’s prize money and why her account had been closed. According to Kalli, Chase said when bank officials checked the phone number of the Small Stock Association, which issued the payment, it was out of service. That seemed suspicious to them, so they froze the funds and closed her account.
“[Chase’s] ultimate response is that, sorry, Kinley is not going to get her money back,” J.R. 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 went in three different times in an attempt to verify the check, but Chase said he could only verify it by phone.
Chase’s actions in freezing Kinley’s check and closing Kali’s account align with standard bank practices for risk management and fraud prevention, especially under KYC (know your customer) and AML (anti-money laundering) regulations. When banks encounter checks from unfamiliar sources or suspect fraud, they may flag the transaction. Freezing funds and closing accounts is a protective measure used to prevent fraud or money laundering.
