More on Bank of America

In one of my earlier posts, Making the Rounds of the Banks, I hinted at more to come on Bank of America.

Let me summarize events leading up to a colossal blunder on the part of BOA (Bank of America):

• On January 16, 2004, I froze Lola's overdrawn checking account at BOA and closed her plundered money market account, drained of all funds by the con artist known as John Mason.

• On January 28, 2004, I called Bank of America's fraud department and filed a fraud claim on the defunct money market account in the amount of $20,321.35 because that was the amount that "Mason" had withdrawn in the previous sixty days.

• In the course of the same call, I tried to file a fraud claim on the frozen checking account too, but they wouldn't let me. There was no way to prove that anyone other than Lola had authorized the telephone transfers of large sums from the checking account into the money market account for John Mason to withdraw.

Are you still with me? What happened next could seriously undermine your trust in banks.

On February 5, 2004, I had the shock of my life when I opened Lola's Bank of America monthly statement. I read the statement in the post office parking lot. My hands shook and I nearly passed out. I wrung my hands, went back to work, closed the door to my office, and tried to make sense of the bizarre chain of events that followed my January 28 call to BOA.

• The FROZEN checking account, originally with a negative balance of about $200, now had a positive balance in the neighborhood of $10,000.
  

• On January 29 (the day after my conversation with the fraud department), the bank had credited the $20,321.35 fraudulently withdrawn from the money market account TO THE FROZEN checking account.
  

• Two large checks written by Lola on January 9 to two Canadian entities ( in reality, probably a single scam) had cleared the FROZEN account (which now contained lots of money). The first check cleared on January 29, the second on February 2. Each check was written for just under $5000, for a total of $9900. At that time, checks in an amount over $5000 would have attracted bank and regulatory scrutiny. Well, at most banks that is. BOA reactivates frozen accounts with a history of fraudulent transactions and puts money in them.
  

If you've read my earlier posts, are you starting to see why my failure to obtain the check register for the frozen checking account was so catastrophic? I had no idea that those checks were out there, but more importantly, even if I had known, I had the bank's assurance that the account was FROZEN. And furthermore, since the account already had a $200 negative balance, I reasoned, how could any check possibly clear?

It gets worse.

• Predictably, Bank of America denied my fraud claim on February 27. After all, Lola had mailed her ATM card to John Mason and included the PIN. Upon denial of the claim, the $20,321.35 in dispute was removed from the checking account. Now the account had a negative balance of about $10,000.

• When I notified Beverly, the Bank VP in Little Rock, she said I (on behalf of Lola) owed the bank the $10,000. My lawyer told me they didn't have a leg to stand on. It didn't matter. I was sick with fear.

• I wrote detailed letters attaching copies of checks and statements along with pertinent facts and sent them to three different Bank of America locations -- the fraud department, customer service, and the billing department. I fretted and fumed for weeks. No one ever called me or contacted me. Finally, on April 23, 2004, a kind person in a BOA office somewhere in Florida told me that the case had been assigned to an investigator. He probably violated some privacy law in telling me that.

I never heard from Bank of America again. Not everyone is so lucky.

Three and a half years after the FBI called

Those awful events of 2004 are far behind me now. But for a long time, falling asleep each night, I was haunted by ghostly visions of my diminutive mother pacing in dark corners of my bedroom. She was always wearing her bathrobe and talking on the phone with her head bent over as if trying to keep me from hearing. With time, the nocturnal images have faded, and I dwell on those days less and less.

In the first 18 months or so of the crisis, there were places I couldn’t let my mind go. There were frauds too painful to investigate, bank statements I couldn't bring myself to view, checks that broke my heart. The distance created by the passing of time and the perspective that retirement has bestowed have blunted the pain and revulsion, allowing me to reflect upon those days and write about them with less angst.

Mother is crazier now, but safely ensconced in a retirement home since December 2004. Scam artists haven't bothered with her in a couple of years (she has no money to give them), and she seldom thinks of the lotteries and "investments" and banks unless somebody reminds her. When that happens, she justs tells everybody that Bank of America stole all her money.

Elder scams don’t seem to be in the news so much lately, but I don't doubt their continued proliferation. Watching a Dateline expose a couple of weeks ago gave me chills – the lonely, vulnerable victims, the international base of operation, the elusive perpetrators. They're still out there.

Yesterday, I found a 14 minute phone call to a porn 800-number -- foxy ladies -- in Mother's cell phone records. I suspect that she stumbled on the number by accident, fooling around with her new cell phone. Interesting, however, that she listened for 14 minutes. I had AT&T disable internet access and text messaging and cancel the MediaClub subscription that had mysteriously appeared on her bill.

Making the rounds of the banks

And my sister, what about her? Her name is Jeannie, and she had broken her ankle a month prior to our shockingly personal introduction to the world of criminals who prey on the elderly. She gamely hobbled around on her walker with me (one of the criteria for choosing a lawyer was handicapped access). However, when it came to the banks, she stayed in the car except for the last one. There is a reason for that.

We set out around 4:00 pm with a mission to get to all three banks before closing. Our first stop was a Simmons Bank branch on Chenal Parkway. Since my name was already on the account and since I was armed with a court order, it was easy to take my mother's name off and convert it to a guardianship account. Unfortunately, it contained less than $100. I learned later that we had not gone to the branch she actually used -- she was quite notorious at the Rodney Parham location.

Next stop, Bank of the Ozarks on Chenal Parkway where she had a household checking account and a trust account. Yes, in her more lucid days, she had set up a trust. I had high hopes for finding money there, and my name was on both accounts already. Alas, I couldn't close or "freeze" the checking account because her social security and military retirement checks were electronically deposited, and I couldn't move the deposits to another account without a permanent court order. I left there having found a total of about $300 in both accounts and with instructions to call Stacy at another branch on Monday about the checking account. Thus ensued many conversations with Stacy (more on this later) to whom my mother's penchant for transferring large sums of money was well known.

One final stop: Bank of America where I had not previously known she held any accounts. We tried a branch on Cantrell Road, and the wait was just too long. We arrived at the Rodney Parham Branch twenty minutes before the 6 pm closing time. We hit the jackpot. I don't mean money -- there wasn't any. I mean this was the branch she used, and she was well known to Beverly, the bank's VP, with whom I spent an hour.

First, Beverly showed me the Money Market account transactions. Someone at a Royal bank ATM in Toronto had withdrawn $600 to $700 (probably $1000 Canadian) almost daily until the account was depleted to a balance of $13. The account was opened with $30,000. I watched in open-jawed amazement as transaction after transaction scrolled down the screen. "You didn't notice this? The bank can't detect such obviously suspicious transactions?" "No" she said.

Next came the checking account which was overdrawn. Beverly noticed a couple of declined ATM transactions -- one from a golf course in California, another in Canada. "You didn't notice this? The bank doesn't flag declined ATM transactions from odd locations?" "No," she said.

My shock deepened as Beverly described some of my mother's bizarre financial transactions. Among them was a cashiers check for $35,000 to someone in Canada. Suspicious that my mother was being scammed, Beverly, with the help of the bank's fraud investigator, tried to talk her out of purchasing this check. Mother went home, thought it over, came back the next day with Bill, and left with her $35,000 cashier's check. She told the bank it was for artwork. It wasn't; it was for fees on her multi-million dollar "winnings" in a Canadian lottery scam. How do I know this? These frightful two days were only the beginning of the unfolding of the massive fraud committed against my mother. So Beverly, does the bank report suspected cases of fraud to the police or anyone? Don't bother, I know the answer.

I was in there so long that Jeannie finally hobbled inside. We chatted with Beverly and the cleaning people, then left. I had closed the money market account and instructed Beverly to freeze the checking account until I could find some money to pay the negative balance. I left there believing that the account was frozen. Really, I did. There will be more, much more on Bank of America.

Collecting evidence

Where was my mother in all this? Well, she didn't know I was in town, so when my sister and I showed up at the house on Friday just before the lawyer appointment, she was so taken aback that she cooperated, initially anyway. She produced a hefty stack of wire transfer receipts totaling over $53,000 during the prior six months, all of them to numerous individuals in Costa Rica. Of course I had to tell her that the FBI needed them in order to get her to hand them over. But when I tried to persuade her to let me take over her finances voluntarily, she became extremely agitated and angrily refused, so we had to leave her in that state and move on.

After the emergency court hearing, our lawyer advised us to visit her banks immediately and freeze her accounts. Once again, we had to go to the house. Again, she was so surprised that she named without hesitation the three banks where she had accounts. Three banks? Why three banks? I only knew about two.