Truist Lawsuit Overview: Settlements, Penalties, and Pending Cases

Truist Financial Corporation, the Charlotte-based bank created by the 2019 merger of BB&T and SunTrust, has been the target of a long list of lawsuits and regulatory actions. The largest for consumers is a $240 million class action settlement over SunTrust overdraft fees in Georgia, with claims open until August 31, 2026. A separate $4.1 million robocall settlement paid out in late 2025. Beyond those, Truist has absorbed federal penalties from the DOJ, SEC, and CFTC, is defending pending suits over executive poaching and disability discrimination, and was caught up in a large third-party data breach. Here is what each matter involves and whether it affects you.

$240 Million SunTrust Overdraft Settlement

This is the case most readers are looking for. Filed in 2010 as Bickerstaff v. SunTrust Bank in the State Court of Fulton County, Georgia, the class action alleged that SunTrust’s overdraft fees functioned as interest charges that violated Georgia’s usury limits. After fifteen years of litigation and a U.S. Supreme Court decision declining to hear Truist’s appeal, the bank agreed in January 2026 to settle for up to $240 million. Plaintiffs had originally sought as much as $452 million.¹ Truist recorded a $130 million charge against its fourth-quarter 2025 earnings tied to the settlement.²

Who Qualifies

The class is narrow. You must be a Georgia citizen who held a SunTrust account that was not closed before June 1, 2010, and who between July 12, 2006 and April 15, 2014 incurred at least one overdraft of $500 or less on an ATM or debit card transaction, paid the fee, and never received a refund. You also must have been a Georgia resident continuously from July 12, 2010 through October 6, 2017.³

How to File and What You Get

The court granted final approval at a fairness hearing on May 26, 2026.³ Claims are due by August 31, 2026 and can be submitted at SunTrustOverdraftClassAction.com, by email to info@SunTrustOverdraftClassAction.com, or by phone at 877-239-8765.⁴ Payments are calculated pro rata based on fees paid plus 7% simple annual interest through December 31, 2025, with a $5 minimum per account.⁵ Estimated individual payouts range from $5 to roughly $1,000 depending on how much you paid in excess fees.

$4.1 Million Robocall Settlement

In February 2023, Texas resident Kevin Truong sued Truist under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, alleging the bank placed unauthorized prerecorded calls to non-customers. Truong said he received at least 24 such calls intended for a different person who held a Truist account.⁶

Truist agreed to a $4.1 million settlement covering roughly 5,998 cellphone users. A North Carolina federal court granted final approval in October 2025.⁷ Class members were set to receive about $440 each automatically, with no claim form required, after $1.3 million in attorney fees.⁶ The window to be identified in that class is closed; if you were included, payment was direct.

FBCS Data Breach Affecting Truist Customers

Truist’s own systems were not directly compromised, but customer data was exposed in a breach at Financial Business and Consumer Solutions (FBCS), a third-party debt collector used by the bank. Between February 14 and February 26, 2024, unauthorized actors accessed FBCS systems and exposed the personal information of more than 4.2 million people, including names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and driver’s license numbers.⁸

Truist offered affected customers two years of free credit monitoring through Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. FBCS was sued by customers and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on August 29, 2024.⁸

Federal Regulatory Penalties

DOJ Settlement Over Lead Poisoning Trust Accounts

In October 2024, Truist paid $9.125 million to resolve DOJ allegations that its predecessor, SunTrust, breached fiduciary duties between 2011 and 2015 in managing the “Doe Run Accounts.” Those trusts held funds for beneficiaries of lead poisoning settlements near Herculaneum, Missouri. The government alleged that SunTrust, working with a structured settlement facilitator called The Halpern Group, routinely approved disbursements not in the beneficiaries’ best interests, including payments to third parties such as family members, despite the beneficiaries’ cognitive and health issues from lead exposure.⁹ Truist denied the allegations, with a spokesperson calling the matter “authorized distributions for a small number of trust accounts which took place around a decade ago.”¹⁰ The settlement resolved the claims without any finding of liability.¹¹

SEC and CFTC Off-Channel Communications Penalties

In August 2024, two federal regulators penalized Truist for the same underlying problem: employees at all levels, including senior managers, were conducting business on personal phones, text messages, and apps like WhatsApp instead of firm-approved channels, so the messages were never archived and could not be produced when regulators asked.

The SEC imposed a $5.5 million civil penalty on Truist Securities, Truist Investment Services, and Truist Advisory Services for recordkeeping violations under the Securities Exchange Act and the Investment Advisers Act. Truist was censured, ordered to cease the violations, and required to retain an independent compliance consultant. Truist had self-reported the issue in June 2023 and was already issuing firm-owned devices before the order.¹² The CFTC issued a separate $3 million penalty for the same conduct on the swap dealer side, citing self-reporting and cooperation as reasons for a reduced amount.¹³

Pending Cases Truist Is Defending

Grandbridge Executive Poaching Suit

In March 2023, Truist and its commercial real estate lending subsidiary Grandbridge Real Estate Capital sued three former Grandbridge executives and their new employer, Colliers Mortgage Holdings, in North Carolina Business Court. The defendants are former Grandbridge president and CEO Matthew Rocco, former COO Joe Lovell, and former national production manager John Randall. All three resigned in December 2022 and moved to Colliers.¹⁴

Truist calls it a “predatory raid,” alleging the executives conspired while still employed to recruit whole offices to Colliers. More than 50 Grandbridge employees left, including 11 production office managers, and Grandbridge lost more than 300 client contracts, at least 180 of which moved to Colliers.¹⁵ Truist claims more than $120 million in lost profits and more than $61 million in personal enrichment by the defendants.¹⁴ The claims include breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, tortious interference, trade secret violations, unfair and deceptive trade practices, civil conspiracy, and unjust enrichment. The defendants deny wrongdoing, and a 2024 ruling flagged that some non-solicitation covenants reached back as far as 17 years, raising enforceability questions under North Carolina law. The case was still in the pretrial phase in early 2025.

Disability Discrimination Suit Over a “Chucky Doll” Incident

In May 2025, Debra Jones, a former relationship banker at a Truist branch in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, filed a federal disability discrimination and retaliation suit, Jones v. Truist Bank (No. 5:25-cv-00268-FL), in the Eastern District of North Carolina.¹⁶

Jones alleges a manager who knew about her diagnosed PTSD and fear of dolls placed a Chucky doll on her office chair, triggering a severe response. She says supervisors later mocked her condition, disclosed her accommodations to colleagues, and restricted approved scheduling flexibility. After she reported the conduct to HR, she alleges she faced public reprimands, threats of termination, and denial of further medical accommodations.¹⁶ She was terminated in March 2026.¹⁷ In December 2025, the court dismissed several claims, including the ADA disparate treatment claim and the emotional distress claims, while allowing others to proceed. Discovery is open until September 30, 2026, and a mediator has been selected.¹⁸

Web Tracker Privacy Suit

Also in May 2025, plaintiff John Tasker filed a proposed class action in the Central District of California alleging Truist embedded pixel trackers on its website to covertly collect user data, including IP addresses, click paths, and session timestamps, and shared it with third-party advertising platforms, in violation of the California Invasion of Privacy Act. Truist settled in August 2025 on undisclosed terms.¹⁹

Legacy Penalties From BB&T and SunTrust

A large share of Truist’s legal exposure predates the merger. In 2014, SunTrust Mortgage paid a combined $968 million across settlements with the CFPB, DOJ, and other agencies over mortgage origination abuses, consumer protection violations, and False Claims Act allegations tied to defective FHA-insured loans.²⁰ In 2016, BB&T paid $83 million to settle DOJ allegations that it endorsed FHA-insured mortgages while knowing that over 30% of internally reviewed loans were rated at the highest defect level, a figure that in some years exceeded 50%.²¹

Enforcement data compiled by Good Jobs First puts total regulatory penalties for Truist and its predecessors at roughly $1.75 billion across 60 recorded actions since 2000, covering consumer protection, mortgage abuses, false claims, anti-money laundering, sanctions, and investor protection violations.²⁰

1
Dealroom.co. Truist To Pay Up To $240M To Settle 15-Year Overdraft Fee Class Action Lawsuit
2
Charlotte Business Journal. Truist Bank Earnings Overdraft Legal Settlement
3
SunTrust Overdraft Class Action. SunTrust Overdraft Class Action Settlement
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Top Class Actions. $240M SunTrust Overdraft Fees Class Action Settlement
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SunTrust Overdraft Class Action (PDF). Bickerstaff v. SunTrust Bank Settlement Notice
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CompliancePoint. Truist Bank Settles $4.1M TCPA Lawsuit Over Unwanted Robocalls
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Law360. Truist Bank $4M Robocall Deal, $1.3M Fee Get Final OK
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Banking Dive. Truist Customer Data Exposed in FBCS Third-Party Breach
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U.S. Department of Justice. Truist Bank Pays Over $9M To Resolve Allegations Concerning SunTrust Banks Administration of Trust Accounts
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Banking Dive. Truist Pay $9M Over Lead Poisoning Payouts
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U.S. Department of Justice. Truist Bank Pays Over $9 Million To Resolve Allegations Concerning SunTrust Banks
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U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In the Matter of Truist Securities, Inc., Administrative Proceeding File No. 3-22000
13
U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Truist Bank CFTC Order, Docket No. 24-10
14
Charlotte Observer. Truist Sues Former Grandbridge Real Estate Executives
15
North Carolina Business Court. Truist Financial Corp. v. Rocco, 2024 NCBC 28
16
Crain Caton & James (Case Summary). Alleged Disability Discrimination by Truist Bank About a Chucky Doll Leads to Federal Lawsuit
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WRAL. Rocky Mount Lawsuit Chucky Doll Harassment Truist Bank
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PACER Monitor. Jones v. Truist Bank
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Banking Dive. Truist Settles Web Tracker Lawsuit
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Good Jobs First Violation Tracker. Truist Financial Violation Tracker
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HousingWire. BB&T To Pay $83 Million for FHA Lending Violations