Should banks be held responsible when the elderly are scammed?
By Greg Collier
An interesting legal issue has arisen in Florida, and it deals with one of the more common scams, where the elderly are usually the targets. Of course, we’re talking about the grandparent scam where scammers call the elderly to tell them that one of their grandchildren is in trouble, and they need money. This scam has claimed far too many elderly victims. However, there have been instances where banks have intervened on their customer’s behalf. Some banks have trained their employees to ask their customers questions about large or frequent withdrawals if they believe the customer might be the victim of a scam. The issue at hand here is just how responsible banks should be when it comes to protecting their customers like this?
An elderly woman in Tampa lost $700,000 to scammers who had convinced her that her granddaughter had been in a car accident and was in legal trouble. One of the scammers posed as her granddaughter and told the woman not to tell anyone else in the family. Another scammer got on the line posing as a local attorney. As most of these scams start out, the first request was for bail money. Then more requests came in stating that money needed to be paid to the people who were supposedly injured in the accident.
This resulted in 13 withdrawals from her bank. In some instances, the victim was instructed to leave packages of cash for couriers to pick up. The bank did ask why the woman was withdrawing so much money, but she told the bank she was renovating her home and paying a contractor who preferred to be paid in cash. This is what the scammers told her to tell the bank if they started asking questions. It’s been reported that someone did call the state’s abuse hotline, but the woman was allowed to keep withdrawing large sums of cash after the call was made.
The victim has since sued the bank for negligence. So what do you think? Did the bank do its due diligence, or should they even be required to do so? Or is this just an unfortunate collision of coincidences that allowed the scammers to prosper?
Discover more from Greg's Corner
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Wally 9:54 pm on October 20, 2021 Permalink
I’m on the fence with this. I worked for a small bank for 8 years and really enjoyed my customers. However, one challenge that you always are scammers trying to customer’s money. Some people come into the back saying they need to withdraw X amount or do cashier’s checks to send people they don’t know.
As a previous banker I would always ask multiple times why they are sending the money and to whom and try to deter them as much as possible and even get managers involved. Some customers [not all] will realize that it’s a scam while others will question you as the banker why you won’t give them their money so they can do what they want. I truly feel really sorry for anyone who is scammed out of their hard earned money. I have sometime refused to handle many transactions if a client refuses to take our advise.
Banking is becoming more and more riskier everyday and I have seen it cripple some banks wit the losses they have suffer being in some installs they may have to reimburse their clients up to FDIC limits. But again, I think it’s TERRIBLE for the elderly or anyone to be scammed.