Bank of America California Unemployment Benefits

This docket consolidates claims by more than 100,000 Californians who received pandemic-era unemployment and disability benefits through prepaid debit cards issued by a bank under contract with California's Employment Development Department, alleging the bank failed to secure the cards, which used outdated magnetic-stripe technology rather than EMV chip technology, exposing accountholders to widespread third-party fraud, and then wrongfully denied fraud claims and froze accounts through an internally implemented claim-screening filter. Centralized in the Southern District of California in 2021, the docket carries 33 pending actions, and courts have already certified multiple California classes and allowed claims for treble and punitive damages to proceed to trial.

For a funder, this is a consumer financial-services claim with real institutional-defendant exposure and favorable procedural momentum: class certification has already been achieved on multiple claims, and the case has cleared the threshold for potentially enhanced damages, both meaningful risk-reducing developments relative to an early-stage consumer financial dispute. Damages here are tied to documented fraud losses, wrongfully withheld benefits, and frozen-account harm suffered by a large, identifiable class of benefit recipients, an unusually well-documented damages population given the underlying benefits program's own recordkeeping.

Criterica Capital's commercial litigation finance line applies well to firm-level litigation cost financing for pursuing this class action through trial, with underwriting benefiting substantially from the already-achieved class certifications and the treble and punitive damages exposure. A structure and litigation brief on the current claim population and trial posture is also available.

Pre-settlement funding is a non-recourse purchase of a portion of the proceeds of a pending legal claim — not a loan. If the case does not result in a recovery, nothing is owed. Rates, fees, and repayment terms are disclosed in full in the funding agreement, which the applicant’s attorney reviews before signing. Availability and terms vary by state.