When Janine Williamson’s uncle, Larry Cook, a retired Navy SEAL who lived in Herndon, Virginia, died, she was appointed administrator of his estate and began receiving his mail. Williamson, a financial planner, saw unusual activity in his monthly statements from Navy Federal Credit Union.

She asked the credit union for 12 months of statements and soon realized that 74 wire transfers of exactly $49,500 each had been sent to individuals in Thailand over the course of six months. (As it turns out, that’s just short of the amount that triggers a government transaction reporting requirement in Thailand.) She subpoenaed Navy Federal for the cover sheets for the wires and saw that they all went to different addresses.

“One of the addresses was ‘alley 165 behind the old Phraya Karai Temple Wat,'” Williamson said in an interview. A bank employee had dutifully written to that address and allowed the wire to be sent, as had the other 71, she said. In total, Cook’s estate was depleted by $3.6 million.

Cook had suffered a stroke two years before his death at age 72, and Adult Protective Services told the credit union that he had diminished mental capacity and needed a guardianship, according to Williamson.

She sued Navy Federal and the case was dismissed. She is appealing the decision.

“I have no recourse,” Williamson said. “No one does. Because you’re a victim, it’s on you. They’re not responsible. It’s scary for anyone who has parents or family members who have had a concussion or are going through chemotherapy or have reduced capacity from dementia or stroke cerebral.”

Williamson helped push a bill through the Virginia General Assembly, called Larry’s Law, that would require financial institutions to train their employees to identify and report potential financial exploitation of senior citizens. The law also requires banks to notify a senior’s trusted contacts of any such exploitation.

This is one of several pressures on banks to better monitor the accounts of older customers (and customers of all ages) for signs of fraud. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is investigating Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase for Zelle fraud, many involving the elderly. A lawsuit filed in late October blames Bank of America, Charles Schwab and cryptocurrency exchange Unchained for allowing a fraudster to siphon $18.5 million from an elderly couple’s account. Several states have adopted laws similar to Larry’s Law that either allow or require financial institutions to report suspected fraud to adult protective services and law enforcement agencies, to withhold or block transactions that appear to be part of an elder fraud scheme and train employees and educate older customers about the signs of fraud.

Meanwhile, fraud cases continue to accumulate and become more sophisticated. The Federal Trade Commission estimates that older Americans lost somewhere between $7.1 billion and $61.5 billion in 2023 (it’s hard to get a firm number because many elder frauds go unreported).

The case of the missing $18.5 million

Los Angeles residents Lawrence Liu, 84, and his wife, Ling-Ling Liu, 76, were the victims of an elaborate scheme in which $29.5 million was moved from their Charles Schwab accounts to the Bank of America and then to the cryptocurrency exchange Unchained and $18.5. million was stolen. The scammers convinced the Lius that they were the victims of a data breach and that their money needed to be moved for safekeeping.

According to the complaint, the Lius have never withdrawn large amounts from their Schwab (formerly TD Ameritrade) accounts and have not sent a wire transfer from their Bank of America account in several years.

“The massive influx of funds worth tens of millions of dollars that began in July 2024 was highly abnormal and required an increased level of scrutiny and investigation that BofA did not provide,” the complaint said.

The scale of this scam is unusual, according to Liz Loewy, co-founder and chief operating officer of EverSafe, who was head of the elder abuse unit at the New York County District Attorney’s office for more than 20 years.

“We’ve had a lot of cases involving millions of people, the Astor case being one of many,” Loewy said, referring to wealthy New York philanthropist and socialite Brooke Astor, whose son, Anthony Marshall, was found guilty of stealing millions from him and illegally manipulating. with her estate while his mother suffered from Alzheimer’s.

“This was very much stolen with a lot of activity that really should have been identified,” Loewy said of the Liu case.

Bank of America declined a request for comment.

“We sympathize with the Liu family and hope that the criminals who stole their money will be brought to justice,” a Schwab spokeswoman said. “But the allegations in the complaint cross the line from advocacy to outright falsehood. No one from Schwab was involved in any of the alleged actions. The Liu family authorized every wire that left Schwab, and every wire went into an account that the Liu family controlled.”

What the banks could do

Banks and brokerage firms have a fiduciary responsibility to look after their customers, Loewy said.

“You can’t just say, no, it wasn’t a Schwab employee and they weren’t involved in any breach, and this could have been malware,” she said. “They stopped short of saying this was consistent with the customer’s banking activity over the past few years. When will banks and brokerages start doing more and start accepting some responsibility for identifying irregular activity?”

That kind of inactivity was why Loewy left the DA’s office, she said. She knew that banks could better monitor customer activity, either alone or with fintech partners.

Another element of such cases, Loewy said, is that while banks generally aren’t authorized to pass on suspicious activity reports under the Patriot Act, they can share those reports in cases of suspected money laundering. money or terrorist financing. “So why didn’t that happen here?” she thought.

Williamson would like to see banks put an end to suspicious transactions, such as the $49,500 wire transfers from her uncle’s account.

Because of FINRA rules, brokerages “have the ability to stop it, review the situation and appeal to close the account and prevent future criminal behavior,” she said.

He also believes technology is part of the answer.

“It’s highly recommended that you have software that alerts the cashier or other employee that this is unusual behavior,” Williamson said.

EverSafe and Carefull are among the fintechs offering such software.

“Get some software, know your clientele, trust your common sense,” Williamson advises banks.

Jilenne Gunther, national director of AARP’s BankSafe Initiative, agrees that monitoring and analysis are essential.

“One of the positives about working with the older population is that they tend to have the same accounts that they’ve always had — I think the average is over 20 years,” she said on an American Banker podcast that will be broadcast on November 19. “So you have a lot of data analytics looking at their past behavior, and banks can use analytics to spot these transactions that don’t fit the pattern. They can determine which device is being used, if there is malware on it, if the bank’s website. is accessed in the banking service area or located in another country.”

A sudden change of address is one of the biggest red flags, Gunther said.