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 Someone at a Royal bank ATM in Toronto had withdrawn $600 to $700 (probably $1000 Canadian) almost daily until the account was depleted to a balance of $13.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.

The day the FBI called

On Thursday, January 15, 2004, my cell phone rang in my office. I answered my sister's call, and thus began a long and trying tale of intrigue, greed, grief, deception, and madness. By 5:00 pm that day, I was three hours away from my home in Fayetteville, sitting in my sister's living room. We listened raptly while an FBI agent described in shocking detail the unhappy fate of $80,000 that my mother had transmitted via check and wire to Canada during the previous one and a half years. Just that week, the transmissions had escalated into thousands of dollars each day to Costa Rica with the help of her friend and accomplice Bill. I knew I needed a lawyer fast. By noon the next day, my sister and I were in the lawyer's office with $53,000 worth of wire transfer receipts to Costa Rica. Within two hours, I had an emergency court order granting me guardianship of my mother's person and estate for 90 days. This from the reputedly "meanest" judge in Little Rock who had never before been known to grant emergency guardianship in such a case. The evidence was compelling.