Tianna Williams wanted to turn around her financial life.
The North Catasauqua resident, who grew up in Whitehall Township, failed to complete high school. With five children, she was struggling financially. Her mother, Tonia Mitchell, who cleans houses, was diagnosed with cancer.
But in 2021, after getting help from some acquaintances who taught her about car sales, she started a used-car business, Automo-Deals, in Palmer Township.
“My mom dreamt it,” Williams, 30, said about the name. “So I just took it.”
And the business took off, Williams said, earning $200,000 in gross sales the first year, and around $1 million the next. She was accomplishing another dream, this one hers: creating generational wealth for her family.
It didn’t last.
“This literally became a million-dollar business, and it was destroyed,” she said.
Williams closed Automo-Deals in early 2023, because of what she said M&T, a large regional bank and one of the nation’s top 25 bank holding companies, did.
Now, Williams is suing M&T.
In a lawsuit, Williams said her issues with M&T began after, on advice of a branch manager, she deposited $35,000 and applied for a line of credit with the bank.
“Almost immediately after [Williams] opened the account and applied for the line of credit, however, her account was frozen for no legitimate reason, and employees of M&T engaged a protracted and intrusive fraud investigation,” according to the lawsuit filed by her attorney, Dean Malik, in Philadelphia County Court.
Tianna Williams is shown in happier times, when the Lehigh Valley resident opened Automo-Deals in Palmer Township. Williams closed Automo-Deals in early 2023, because, she said, of a fraud allegation by M&T Bank that hurt her ability to raise credit. (Courtesy photo/Tianna Williams)
Williams, who is Black, believes her race played a role in the bank’s decisions.
Frank Lentini, a spokesperson for M&T, which is based in Buffalo, New York, said the bank does not discuss individual accounts or investigations publicly due to privacy and regulatory concerns.
“We are committed to serving all our customers and community partners fairly and respectfully,” he said in a statement.
A mysterious freeze
When M&T, which has two branches in the Lehigh Valley, froze her account, it left Williams without capital to keep operating, she said.
Bank officials falsely accused her of fraud and “aggressively disparaged” her to two commercial lenders, which ceased doing business with her, according to the lawsuit. One of the lenders did not respond to requests for comment. Ira Steinberg, vice president with the other, New City Funding Corp. in Stony Point, New York, declined comment.
Despite finding no wrongdoing and unfreezing her account, the bank’s actions forced Williams to close Automo-Deals, according to the lawsuit.
Malik said the civil complaint accuses M&T, among other things, of “negligent training and supervision,” and “tortious interference” over a contractual relationship. The bank has acknowledged in court documents that it lacks specific policies regarding how its fraud investigators should act with customers.
The bank didn’t tell Williams why it accused her of fraud or took about six weeks to clear her, according to the lawsuit, but one clue may come from one of the agencies that monitor banks that Williams filed complaints with before hiring Malik.
In a June 23, 2023, letter, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York told Williams that the bank’s response to the agency said “multiple large cash withdrawals, and missing business documentation” led M&T officials to place a freeze on her account. The bank closed the account May 31, 2023.
While the Fed letter said it shared complaint details with the agency’s official responsible for oversight of M&T, it could not provide Williams with the bank’s response “due to the confidential supervisory nature of the information.”
Malik said agencies like the Federal Reserve, which should act as watchdogs, “actually protect the industry more so than they actually protect the consumer.”
“The message we want to send to the world,” Malik said, “is that no matter how powerful a bank or any corporation may think that it is, it ultimately has to be accountable for the actions of their employees, and it doesn’t have the right or the authority to destroy people’s lives and people’s businesses.”
Tianna Williams stands in her home Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, in North Catasauqua. Williams, 30, is suing M&T Bank for discrimination, claiming the bank’s wrongful actions cost her her successful car-sales business. (Amy Shortell / The Morning Call)
A possible motive
Some of the court documents include bank emails with disparaging messages about Williams. But the complaint stops short of accusing M&T of racial bias or discrimination, Malik said.
“If you punch somebody, it’s a crime whether you use racial epithets or not,” Malik said. “But do we believe discrimination is the underlying motive? Yes.”
Jesse Van Tol, president and CEO of the National Consumer Research Center, a nonprofit that advocates for fairness in banking, said in general, customers in recent years have had to deal with banks being short-staffed, and branch personnel lacking sufficient expertise and experience to help customers
“Now, you might have a limited number of people in a branch, and everybody is a generalist,” said Van Tol, who stressed he was not speaking specifically about M&T. “So training becomes very important.”
The case remains pending, both in Philadelphia County Court and Pennsylvania Superior Court, where the bank appealed county Commerce Court President Judge Paula A. Patrick’s order regarding certain documents the bank has withheld from Malik.
Malik said he hopes the case will ultimately result in Williams receiving unspecified reimbursement for “the loss of future revenue had it not been destroyed” by M&T.
Williams said she has struggled since 2023 to regain the income she was making selling used cars.
She added her family, despite struggling to achieve more in life, has always fought for what’s fair. It’s how she feels about the case against M&T.
“I have no choice,” she said.
“Tianna once said to me, ‘It’s like I have to walk on water because of my race to be successful,’ ” Malik said.
Williams has another dream — to one day own a new car lot.
“I would have had a franchise by now, if I kept going,” she said confidently. “Williams Ford!”
Contact Morning Call reporter Anthony Salamone at asalamone@mcall.com.