A California attorney says Chase Bank has turned his life upside down after it seized more than $185,000 from his accounts, leaving him homeless and forcing him to cancel his wedding.
Brian Adesman, 32, has filed a lawsuit in California claiming the bank closed all of his personal and business accounts without warning or explanation. According to him, the sudden action shattered his finances, tanked his credit score, and left him unable to repay debts.
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The wedding—already in the planning stages with engagement photos taken—was called off. After falling behind on mortgage payments for his downtown Los Angeles apartment, Adesman says he ended up purchasing a 1992 Coachmen Catalina RV for $3,500 through Facebook Marketplace, where he now lives.
He’s now locked in a legal battle with Chase to recover his funds. Adesman alleges the bank shut down his accounts in early 2024 while he was working as a founding partner at Miller Adesman, a firm handling personal injury, employment, and class action cases.
A decade-long Chase customer, he claims the bank froze every dollar he had. “They refused to tell me why they were holding my money,” Adesman said. “No warning. No explanation. Just silence — while my credit score collapsed and debt collectors flooded my phone.”
“This wasn’t just my business account — Chase shut down my personal and client trust accounts too, without cause. It wasn’t policy enforcement. It was financial destruction.”
According to the lawsuit, Chase gave no reason for the closures. Adesman says he filed complaints with multiple agencies—including the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the FDIC, the Attorney General, and the Department of Financial Services—but got nowhere.
More than a year later, he claims the bank still hasn’t returned his money.
When contacted, a Chase Bank spokesperson said the bank identified “concerning transactions” and acted in line with account terms. The spokesperson also referred to a separate lawsuit in New Jersey, in which a title company alleges it was defrauded into sending $3.7 million into Adesman’s firm’s account. That company is now suing Chase to recover the money.
Chase declined to say whether the lawsuit was connected to the freezing of Adesman’s accounts.
Adesman insists there were no questionable transactions. He believes Chase flagged the account after he received legitimate settlement funds for legal services provided to a client in Mexico. He says he was never made aware of the New Jersey case until a reporter contacted him.
“I was never told about [a case] involving parties I’ve never heard of and facts I know nothing about,” he said. “Yet Chase is now pointing to it as some sort of retroactive justification for what they did to me.”
In his lawsuit, Adesman says Chase initially agreed to return the $175,649 from his business account via cashier’s check within 10 business days—but the check never arrived.
He also claims the bank refused to return the money in his personal account, saying the funds were being held indefinitely under review. Adesman says he offered to provide documentation to verify the funds, but the bank declined his help.
